Bitten
by csyphrett
Summary: A body is found by accident. Detectives from Baltimore and Philadelphia are called on to solve the cold case.


Bitten

1

She broke off a branch as she stumbled through the dark. She didn't know where she was, or where she could run for safety.

She had hoped to build a better life. That had been dashed coldly on the side of the road. That talk had led to her running in the dark.

She heard movement behind her. She didn't bother to check to see what had made the sound. There was only one thing she was afraid of at the moment. Anything else would be a relief.

She ran into a root and fell in the dark. She picked herself up and looked around. The pursuit lingered in the dark.

She looked around for something she could use as a weapon. She could never outrun what was chasing her. She should have known that from the beginning.

How had she let herself believe things would be different? She had fooled herself that her lover would change. She should have known better.

His minions appeared like living shadows from the darkness. They bared their teeth as they examined her. Evidently she wasn't much of a threat to them.

How long did she have before they decided to charge? She couldn't hope to fight them off. There were too many of them.

She picked up a branch as she backed up. It was the best she could do. She waved it in front of her as she backed up. If she turned, they would be on her before she could take a step.

This was her last stand.

She tried to brain one of her attackers with the limb. She moved too slow as the minion jumped back out of the way. Another came in from her right and she felt a stab in her ankle. She kicked to try to get her leg free.

She swung her makeshift weapon. A startled yelp greeted her effort. She stepped back. Blood ran down her leg. She didn't look down at the jagged rip she knew would be there. She concentrated on the next attacker.

She had to get to a tree and try to climb out of reach. She could never outrun the four. They were much faster than she could ever hope to be.

She didn't see any tree that looked climbable. All the branches seemed too small, or just out of reach.

She swung again to keep them back. They watched her for an opening. The wounded leg didn't want to support her weight as she dragged it when she moved.

All they had to do was wait. Eventually she would lose too much blood and pass out. She had to get away long enough to do something about her wounds.

She didn't want to die without putting up a fight. Giving up was something other people did. She never would.

She would make them pay dearly for her life. She firmed up her lips and wiped the tears from her face with one hand as she hobbled to a tree. She put her back against the wood and waited. They would know they hadn't attacked someone helpless before she was done.

She swung her staff again with both hands. She connected with the two handed blow. The limb broke from the impact as the killer flew backwards.

She swung the remains of her weapon as she tried to keep her back to the tree. She didn't want them to get behind her. They would tear her to shreds easily.

She also realized that they would tear her apart anyway. The blood from her wound covered her sock and shoe as it poured down her leg. She wasn't going to be able to hold them off for long.

"You were right, Mom." She laughed like a needle jumping on a record. "I should have stayed home."

Her killers rushed forward. She couldn't stop them all. They ripped at her as she swung her broken weapon around blindly. She heard a yelp, but it was small comfort against the pain she suffered.

They kept tearing until their chief whistled at them to stop. They looked up, blood dripping from their bodies.

"Truck." He glared at them. "Truck, now!"

They ran back into the shadows of the forest at his raised voice. He watched them go before shaking his head. He looked at the carnage with a shake of his head. He scooped up some dead wood and piles of leaves and covered the mess.

Sooner or later, someone would find her. He could almost see the group of cops looking the body over as he turned away. He started walking into the night.

Ten years later, a wide black man and his muscular white partner walked down the same trail to a group of blue clad men surrounding something on the ground. The black man stuck a cigar in his mouth as he looked around.

What were they doing out there in the middle of nowhere?

"Bunk, McNulty." The senior technician waved them over. "We have a dead body here. We don't know how she bought it. Maybe an animal attack."

"You called us out here for an animal attack?" Bunk chewed on his cigar. "We're the murder police."

"I doubt a bear picked up all those limbs and covered her." The technician pointed at the pile off on a sheet. "If it was an animal attack, someone came by later and made sure finding the body would take a while."

"Human hands." McNulty got closer to inspect the body where it lay at the base of a tree. "The clothes are old. She might have been laying here for years. Maybe ten from the looks of the sweater and shirt."

"What do you think, McNulty?" The bigger man joined him, hands in his coat pockets. He noted the dried blood on the pants. No DNA would be there for them after all this time.

"Whatever hit her ripped her to shreds." He pointed at the tears in the clothes. "I'm going to say either a kid, or a woman. Maybe a small man, but I doubt it."

"No trail after all this time." Bunk looked up and down the path. "Dump, or did she walk?"

"All this?" McNulty waved his hand. "If it's a dump, the guy was covered with blood. If she came down here, why?"

"The road is a long ways back there." The detective pointed a broad hand back the way they had come. "Maybe he carried her. Any tracks will be useless."

The white man looked around. He frowned as he surveyed the area.

"This is a bloody mess." He grimaced. "How did we get roped into this? This murder, animal attack, whatever the heck it is, is colder than my butt when I got assigned harbor duty."

"Don't be a hole." Bunk Moreland looked at the body. Gears within gears turned in his head. They had nothing until they knew what had killed the vic. They needed a guy who could tell them what had happened to this body. Even then, they still might not close it.

The golden rule for a murder was solve it in forty eight hours, or you never will.

"Who is the M.E. assigned to this?" He asked the senior tech. He wanted the best guy with a knife on this. That was the only chance he had to close it.

"Don't know yet." He looked at his checklist. Almost everything was done. "We're going to load the body up and take it in."

"Who found the body?" McNulty didn't see any civilians, or uniforms for that matter.

"A jogger out on a nature hike." The crime scene investigator pointed further along the path. "Our guys are down there with him."

"Let's go talk to Johnny Public." McNulty started down the path.

"Do me a favor, Stan." Bunk chewed on his unlit cigar. "When you get the vic to the coroner, ask for Sear to examine it."

"Cole Sear?" Stan made a note in his pad. "Why him?"

Sear was the youngest pathologist in the office. He had helped close some of the more difficult cases Baltimore had.

He had helped the Navy put down a guy freezing people's faces off a few months ago.

"Because he's the only one I know who will be able to tell if the animals chewed on her after she was dead." Bunk shrugged. "If he can't do it, no one else could."

Stan nodded. He had heard things, but he wasn't ready to believe them yet.

"We're going to lift the body in a bag and then carry it up to the meat wagon." He nodded up the hill after McNulty. "We'll check it for trace back at the office."

"Let me know what you find." The detective took one more look around the scene. "Did the vic have any identification?"

"No." Stan shook his head. "There wasn't anything in the pockets."

"Do what you can." Bunk headed up the trail. "Let me check on what I like to laughingly call my partner so he doesn't embarrass me."

"Good luck on that, Bunk." Stan waved a hand as he went back to his checklist.

McNulty had his own reputation but it wasn't for excellence in the pursuit of justice and the protection of the people of Baltimore.

Moreland walked through the trees. Ten years ago, the area would have been inaccessible to anything not on foot. Roads had been carved out of the wilderness and now foot and motor traffic had encroached on the forest.

He found McNulty talking to the uniforms. Sgt. Kiefer had his pad in hand, indicating the motion of traffic to the body.

McNulty took down notes in his own pad. He indicated the one guy in his jogging shorts and T-shirt with a thumb. The uniform confirmed it was the witness.

Moreland looked at the path as it ran back through the trees of the forest. He doubted the vic had ran down this way to wind up dead. How had she wound up at the base of that tree?

Bunk walked over to where the witness waited. The man looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. He probably didn't know anything.

If the body was ten years old, this guy would have been a kid somewhere.

"Detectives Moreland and McNulty." Bunk waved his cigar at himself and his partner. "Did the sergeant take your information?"

The witness nodded at the question. "Name's Wes Sage."

"Can you tell us what you were doing when you found the body. Mr. Sage?" The cop put on a bland face.

Sage took them through his morning routine. He showed them how he had parked on the street, then stretched before starting down the path. He walked along, indicating things he had seen as he ran. He paused at the edge of where Stan and his people were working. He waved to show where he was standing, and what had attracted his attention.

Moreland compared what his statement said to his walkthrough. They were about the same. It wasn't much help.

Bunk sent him on his way with a card in case he remembered anything else.

"Not much use." McNulty put his pad away.

"We're going to lift the body." Stan waved them back. "Watch it."

Bunk frowned as the techs gently shifted the body on a sheet and wrapped it before placing that inside a rubber bag.

"This is going to be a mess." McNulty shook his head. "I need a drink."

2

Detective Scotty Valens paused as he, and Detective Lilly Rush, walked into their squad room. He paused because a sad looking guy in a big coat was reading a file at his desk. He started to change direction to clear the squatter from his personal space.

"Valens, Rush." Lieutenant Stillman stuck his mostly bald head out of his office. Reading glasses perched on his nose. He waved at the two before going back to his desk. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie hung loose as he went over reports from his detectives.

"Who's the stiff at my desk?" Valens looked through the windows of the office as Rush closed the door with her slender fingers.

"Doctor Cole Sear." Stillman placed his glasses on his desk. "He has a possible cold job in Baltimore. He's here to try to get enough for a positive ident. I want you two to take him around and ask questions of the family."

"What's the job, Boss?" Rush looked through the window at their visitor. She saw a girl with curly hair in a striped sweater for a moment. She stood over Sear, and he seemed to be listening to her. A detective blocked her view for a second and when he was out of the way, the girl was gone.

"Arleen Quail went missing ten years ago. Mother filed a report. Investigating officer put it down as a runaway." Stillman frowned. "No ransom demand, no corpse, no case."

The detectives frowned, but understood the procedure. You could look around for a missing person and never find them, or find them years later working out of some club halfway across the country. To assume a murder had taken place, you had to have a body and a scene to work with to show evidence of a crime.

"But now we have a body?" Rush straightened with the sense this was a murder and not an accident. She could feel it.

"Baltimore has a body." Stillman handed her the file brought up from Maryland by Sear. "It might be a suspicious death, it might be an animal attack. The first step is to make sure that this body is Arleen Quail and then we can try to figure out how she got out of the city."

Rush scanned the contents of the file before handing it over to Valens. The victim had been found in a park. Numerous bites from a large canine had been present in the bones, but the body had decomposed under a cover of leaves and brush for ten years. Some jogger had stumbled over it and called it in.

"How did Baltimore make the connection between this and the missing girl?" Valens tapped the sheets of paper in his hand. The photos showed that only a skull remained for a face.

"Facial recognition and the FBI's missing persons unit." Stillman held up a picture of a smiling girl with curly hair. He held up a drawing that was almost identical. "The FBI sent it out in their packages, and one of our guys matched it visually."

"How did he get a drawing?" Valens glanced at the man at his desk. "It looks almost the same as the picture."

"Sketch artist." The lieutenant put the photos down on his desk. "Take him to see the mother. Find out what you can. If we can't close it, we can at least give it to Baltimore and let them run with it."

"So we're chasing this like a murder?" Valens handed the file back.

"Unless some kind of wild animal covers the body and never goes back after the initial attack, human hands were involved." Stillman placed the file to one side. "I want to make sure those hands only buried the body before I put this down as an animal attack."

"Let's talk to the good doctor, Scotty." Rush smiled as she pulled open the door. "If we can't make anything out of this, it goes back to Baltimore and we can move on to live cases."

"A simple family notification. How hard could it be?" Valens walked out of the office, hands in his pockets. He knew that cold cases were rarely simple.

Time obscured what really happened, closed wounds with patches of memories. Once you started digging into that, things became complicated quickly.

"Doctor Sear?" Lilly gestured at herself and Valens. "I'm Detective Rush. This is Detective Valens."

"Pleased to meet you." The policeman made his irritation at the commandeering of his desk plain in his voice. "We're supposed to be doing a family notification?"

"I am hoping that Mrs. Quail still has something with Arleen's DNA." Sear stood, hunching in his coat, hands in the pockets. "That will identify her positively. Right now she's just another Jane in the morgue."

"Aren't you hot in that coat?" Valens and Rush were dressed in simple suits. The weather was beautiful outside the House.

"I get the chills sometimes." Sear shrugged. "When do you want to get started?"

"Let's start now." Rush smiled. "The Boss said you used facial recognition on the vic."

"I know an artist. I commissioned a picture based on the measurements of her face. The fact that the face had been loaded into the FBI's computer systems had been the real stroke of luck. The next move would have been handsending the picture to all the nearby police agencies until someone gave me a clue." The three of them headed for the elevator to go down to the lobby of the building.

"Shouldn't a detective being doing this?" Valens pushed the floor button.

"The city is in the middle of a budget crunch." Sear shrugged. "It was easier for me to drive up here than it was to free up a detective and have him carry the kit. Besides I know someone who can rush the samples for me so we can match the victim in a couple of days if she helps me."

"She?" Rush wondered about that. Sear seemed too vague to be involved with someone. The eyes seemed to focus away from the real world.

She had seen the same effect in the mentally ill.

"Abby works for NCIS." Sear's flat response broke apart any emotional connection. "She handles their DNA typing for their criminal cases."

"NCIS?" That was a new one on Rush.

"Navy cops." Valens smiled at being one up. "They wanted to know what happened with that dead Marine job we did a couple of years ago."

"I remember." Stillman had declared jurisdiction since they had the new lead in the case after it had gone cold.

The elevator opened on the lobby to reveal Detective Nick Vera waiting on the elevator. He was wide enough to block their way without effort.

"Kat in?" He raised his eyebrows at the sight of the stranger in the elevator.

"Not yet." Lilly held the doors as she waited for him to move. "We're going down to talk to a vic's family. Got any jobs on?"

"Waiting on Ballistics for that shooting two day sago." Vera stepped aside for them to get off the elevator.

"Can you run a trace on a girl named Arleen Quail?" Rush wrote the name down on a sheet from her pad and handed it over. "The PEE DEE in Baltimore think they found her body. We should see if she left a trail out of the city."

"I'll run her name through the computers when I get up to the office." Vera glanced at the sheet and tucked it in his jacket.

"Thanks, Vera." Rush gave him a smile as the trio started across the lobby.

"Do you think he'll find anything?" Sear's sad face showed a large amount of doubt.

"You never know." Rush smiled. "He looks and acts like a bear, but he can be sharp when he wants to be."

"Where are we going?" Valens broke in as he looked around for the unmarked he regularly used.

"Mrs. Quail still lives at the same address that was in the missing person report." Sear went to an old car on the street. He opened the back and pulled out a kit. "I checked before I drove up here."

"Let's drive over and see if she's home." Lilly opened the door so the medical examiner could ride in the back of the unmarked.

"Still there after ten years." Valens got behind the wheel. "If it is her girl, this isn't the news she's waiting to hear."

"All we can do is get a sample, if one is still there." Cole hunched in his coat. "Once we compare that with the one from the corpse, we'll know for sure. If it doesn't match, I'll have to start over with the next match."

The detectives looked at each other. Their visitor was casually mentioning spending years on just one case until he had closed it. His caseload must be the lightest in Baltimore.

They drove through the city until they reached a neighborhood populated by small houses with small yards. Some had picket fences. Kids were everywhere in the street, making room for the car with surly faces.

Valens pulled into the driveway and parked. He got out and looked around, as the kids watched him. Rush and Sear got out of the other side of the car. The medical examiner held his DNA kit under his arm.

"How do we handle this?" He glanced at the others as he watched the kids watching him.

"The truth." Sear hunched in his coat. "I don't want to get her hopes up before we're sure."

"What's Plan B if she doesn't want to cooperate?" Valens gave him a skeptical look. He was used to people holding back on him rather than being truthful.

"We figure some way to get her DNA." The doctor walked forward. "There will be enough in common to rule out if the body is her daughter."

Rush and Valens looked at each other. Scotty snorted. Everything depended on a woman waiting ten years for word to come back. This could be a short interview.

3

Rush pushed the door bell button as they stood on the porch of the house. The kids yelled some things at them. Valens waved them off, but they jeered at him.

"Hello." A thin woman with a square jaw and pulled back hair pulled the door open. She wore shorts and a T-shirt. "I don't want any."

"Police." Rush showed her the detective's badge she carried. "I'm Detective Rush, and this is Detective Valens, and Dr. Sear."

Valens copied her move with his own badge.

"You found Arleen?" Mrs. Quail frowned at them. "Is she okay?"

"We don't know yet, Mrs. Quail." Rush noted that her hair seemed to curl on its own at the ends. It matched the pictures of Arleen. "Can we come inside and talk with you about this?"

"Yes, I suppose." She retreated from the door and led the way to her kitchen at the back of the house. She poured a cup of coffee from the maker and sat down at the kitchen table. She gave them a wary eye, especially Sear.

He was wearing a coat in the middle of the summer, but he wasn't sweating.

"What's this all about?" She didn't offer them seats at the table.

"May I?" Sear placed the kit on the table. He reached into his coat and pulled the two pictures out in their bags. He placed them next to the kit.

"It's a drawing that looks close to my girl." Mrs. Quail shrugged. "So what?"

"It's the best we can do from a dead body we found in the woods." Sears shrugged in his coat. "We were hoping to get something with your daughter's DNA and confirm or deny whether it is her."

"You found a body and you think it's my girl." She glared at him. "It's been a decade. Why are you showing up now?"

"The body was found in my jurisdiction a few days ago." Sear showed her his card. "Baltimore has a lot of more recent dead bodies that have to be taken care of before the city will pay for a case where the victim has been dead for ten years."

"What about her boyfriend?" Mrs. Quail glared at him. "Did you find his body?"

"No." Sear shook his head. "What can you tell us about him?"

"His name was Joey Naif. He was surly and mean as far as I could tell." She sipped on her coffee. "I don't know what Arleen saw in him."

Mrs. Quail stood at the door separating the kitchen from the rest of the house. Her daughter stood in the living room. They shouted at each other about the importance of school. Arleen fled out the front of the house.

The mother ran after her daughter. She paused at the front door. Arleen pulled herself into the cab of a white pickup truck. Tears ran down her face.

Joey Naif had his arm around her shoulders as they drove away.

Mrs. Quail watched the truck until it was out of sight.

"That was the last I saw of her." She washed her empty cup out in the sink. "I filed the report as soon as I could. Never saw her, or her boyfriend again."

"What can you tell us about this Naif?" Valens held his notebook and pen ready to record. "We're going to have to talk to him."

"His family lived down the street. I heard that Mrs. Naif had died, but his father should still be there." She sat back down at the table. "Joey has been gone a long time."

"Did Joey's father file a missing report for him also?" Rush crossed her arms as she watched the older woman.

"I don't know. I thought he had." Mrs. Quail shrugged. "It's not like I was friends with them."

"Do you have any of Arleen's things?" Sear hunched in his coat. "We need something with her DNA on it so we can test it and make sure this isn't her."

"I have everything she left behind." She waved at them to follow. "I don't know how much good it will do you."

"Anything can be helpful." Sear slouched in his coat as he walked behind her. "I once helped solve a case with just a tooth."

"Ouch." She paused at a closed door. A picture of Kevin Costner as Robin Hood hung on the wood thanks to some thumbtacks.

She opened the door for them and stepped back.

The room had been tidied and the dust kept down. A folded quilt sat on the foot of the bed, on top of a light cover and sheets. Cartoon icons covered the walls. A chest of drawers had a top with a drawing set and partial board set up on it. The furniture was short enough for someone to sit in front of it in a chair and use the board.

"Arleen wanted to break into being an artist for comic strips and things." Mrs. Quail's face hardened against any regret. "She practiced all the time."

"Did she have a diary?" Rush looked around the room. It was similar to other rooms she had seen where the victims never came home.

They became shrines.

"I don't know." Mrs. Quail shrugged. "She had a lot of sketchpads and notebooks she kept."

"Try under the bottom drawer." Sear picked up a brush and examined the long hair still in the teeth.

He pulled out a magnifying glass and examined it. "This might be okay, depending. Did she have a tooth brush?"

"Arleen's bathroom was through that door." She pointed at a door to the right of the bed.

Sear put the glass away and pulled a bag from the DNA kit. He dropped the brush in that and sealed it. He wrote down the day, time, and case number on the label before putting the bag in the kit.

Rush reached down and pulled out the bottom drawer of the chest. A book fell out of it to the floor. She picked it up and flipped through it.

The three of them looked at the opened door to the bathroom.

"Is this Arleen's handwriting?" Rush opened the book to a random page to show the mother.

"Yes." Mrs. Quail smiled. "This is her writing."

"Can we take this with us?" Rush gently closed the book.

"Can you find out what happened to my little girl?" She glared at Rush and Valens with her gimlet eyes.

"Yes." Rush didn't hesitate. "We can."

"Then take it with my blessing." Mrs. Quail nodded at the decision. "Don't tell me she ran away without calling once, or she would leave her things behind, or that she was some prostitute and wasted away in an alley somewhere."

"If your daughter is the girl we found." Sear held bags with a tooth brush and something else. He put them in his kit. "I can definitely say none of those things applied to her. Something bad did happen, but not because of anything you, or she, did wrong."

"How would you know?" She glared at him. He hunched in his coat, face grim and drooping down.

"Because until I can rule out an accident or misadventure, it looks like your daughter was murdered." Sear drew his coat closer as mist escaped him in the sudden chill in the room. "The first step is to make sure the victim is your daughter, but I am pretty sure that DNA will confirm that. Then the detectives will have to start asking more questions to trace down her movements after she left here."

"Joey Naif?" Mrs. Quail sat on the bed.

"He might be alive, he might be dead too." Sear sat down with her. He didn't offer any other support. "We didn't find his body with her's. We don't know anything at this point. This isn't going to be a missing person filed as runaway and forgotten. This is going to be a murder until we find out what happened."

"Joey's father lives in the white house down the street." She nodded. "It has these buckets next to the mail box."

"We'll talk to him next." Valens scowled at Sear for a moment. "Is there anything else you remember?"

"Joey had a job as a dog walker." Mrs. Quail stood.

She watched Joey and Arleen from her window in the front of the house as he tried to lead these big dogs around. She wondered what kind they were, but she didn't go out to talk to them. Arleen would have been embarrassed like all teenage girls are about their mothers meeting boys they are interested in.

"I think he wanted to be a vet, but I'm not sure." She wiped her eyes.

"What about your husband?" Rush tucked the diary under her arm.

"He left before Arleen did." Mrs. Quail shook her head. "I seem to always drive people away."

"If you think of anything else, call me." Rush handed her a business card. "I'll bring the diary back as soon as I can."

Mrs. Quail put the card down on her daughter's old drawing board. Her eyes had filmed some, but she held back the tears.

She walked them to the front door and watched them walk to their car. She closed the door on them.

Sear pulled out his phone. He pressed a number and waited. He watched the house with vagueness as if watching for something unusual to happen.

"What kind of animals attacked the vic?" Valens scowled at their third wheel.

"Big dogs from the marks." Cole frowned. "At least two, maybe three."

"So the kid takes her to Baltimore, they have an argument, and he sics the dogs on her." Valens stated the theory. He paused when the others looked at him. "Am I missing something?"

"No kid." Sear smiled when his phone spoke to him. "Hello, Abby. I was wondering if you could help me."

"Where is he now?" Rush smiled slightly at the expression on the doctor's face. He looked more panicked than vague now. "What has he been doing the last ten years? Is he alive?"

"I need a rush job on a DNA typing." Cole examined his kit. "I can overnight it to you at the Naval Yard."

"Maybe Vera has come up with something." Valens scratched his eyebrow. "He has to be somewhere."

"The truck is the place to start." Rush started for the car. "Let's talk to his father. Maybe he can tell us something about his son. Maybe Joey has been living with him all these years."

"Thanks, Abby." Cole nodded. "It will be a big help on this case."

He hung up and took a deep breath and let it go.

"What did your girlfriend say?" Valens smiled at the wince that invoked.

"Abby will get on the typing as soon as I can messenger the samples to her." Sear checked his watch. "That will let us know if we're on the right track."

"You said it was murder." Valens gestured at the house.

"It is." Sear hunched in his coat. "But the weapon is long gone by now. The only thing we have is our victim was last seen with a boy ten years ago. He might have been a dog walker. We don't know for sure about that. He was last seen driving a white truck. What does that give you?"

"Not a lot." Rush smiled. "But it does give us something we can use. We know Joey was the last one to see Arleen alive. We have to see what we can do to find him."

"I'll call Bunk and let him know." Sear checked his contact list on his phone. "Maybe he and McNulty can do something in Baltimore."

"I'll call Vera and see if he can trace the truck through the registration." Valens pulled out his own phone. "Maybe Joey came home after killing the girl."

"Maybe he's dead too." Cole nodded and called the extension for the Homicide Squad. "Bunk? The Philly people dug up a lead. Joe Naif was the last one to see the vic alive. They're hoping he settled in Maryland after the murder."

"Nick?" Valens liked the kid for it. It was the simplest solution and he liked things simple. "We need you to do a search for Joe Naif's truck. Check for anything under his name."

They hung up after receiving assurances the information would be found.

"How did you know the diary was in the drawer?" Rush asked.

"Where else would it be?" Sear must have heard that question before to answer so quickly. Rush frowned at him. She sensed the evasion behind the answer. He had known something before they went in to talk to the mother.

She wondered how much she could push before he clammed up.

4

Valens drove them down the street. He tapped the wheel as he sped along. He paused beside the buckets turned upside down around the mailbox before pulling over in front of the driveway. He noted a blue pickup next to the house as he got out of the car.

Empty doghouses sat in a row near the side of the house. It was a small square setup with a carport like most of the others on the street. The grass was longer. Trees created shadows everywhere.

"Could use a paint job." Rush looked up and down the street.

Sear regarded the dog houses silently. He decided they hadn't been used in a while. He wondered why.

Maybe Joey had been the only dog handler in the family.

"Is this guy a suspect, or a witness?" Valens frowned at the house.

"We're just here to find out if he knows where Joey is." Rush straightened her jacket. "If he can give us that, we can come back and ask him other things later."

"Ask him about the dog houses." Sears hunched in his coat as he stared at the plastic constructions. "I don't see any dogs to go with them."

"We should use Sear as our excuse." Valens smiled. "Maybe that will get Naif to open up."

"Checking for DNA?" Sear shrugged. "We can try it."

"We use that rather than telling him the truth?" Rush nodded. "It's better than walking into some kind of cover-up with both of them involved."

"And it's a good excuse to look around without a warrant." The other detective smiled. "That means no need for a probable cause, or lawyers."

"Let's see how far we can carry it." Rush headed for the door along the cracked sidewalk. "Anything we can get about Joey will help us find him."

She knocked on the door. The doorbell had broken under too many thumb pushings. She listened for movement inside the house.

After a few minutes of waiting, the door opened to reveal a thin man with a large pair of glasses. A beard and mustache of gray hair hid his mouth and chin. He wore a plaid work shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans. Old sneakers covered his feet.

"What do you want?" He looked them over but didn't step away from the door.

"I'm Detective Rush." The blond policewoman indicated her companions with a hand. "This is Detective Valens, and Doctor Sear. Are you related to Joe Naif?"

"It's not a crime." He glared at them from behind his glasses. "Why?"

"We would like to talk to you about securing his DNA if you have it." Rush kept her smile on her face. "A body has been found and we want to mark him off the list of possibles."

"He left years ago." Mr. Naif moved to slam the door in their faces. Scotty braced his foot to stop that. "I threw all of his things away."

"You don't have anything we can use?" Rush wondered why he wasn't asking about the circumstances.

"Nope." He pushed the door against Valen's foot.

"What about Mrs. Naif?" Valens asked. He smiled as he jammed the door open. "Does she have anything we can use?"

"She died." Mr. Naif frowned at his foot. "She took sick and died in the hospital. The doctors couldn't help her."

"Sorry to hear that." Rush pulled out one of her cards. "If you think of anything we can use, please call."

"I was wondering about these dog houses." Sear pointed to the plastic kennels. "How many dogs do you have?"

"None." Mr. Naif paused to look at the dog houses himself before going back to shutting the door. "They were Joe's. I got rid of them too. Sent them to the pound."

"Thank you for your time." Rush stepped off the porch. "We'll call you if we find anything out."

Valens stepped back. Naif slammed the door in their faces.

"Mrs. Naif died in the hospital." Sear looked at the doghouses. He walked over and looked at them.

"That's what he said." Valens and Rush looked at each other before following him. "What's the problem?"

"I don't know." The medical examiner walked around the shelters. "He got rid of everything but the dog houses."

"Why keep them?" Valens crossed his arms. "There's no dogs."

"That's what I was thinking." Sear hunched in his coat.

"A more important question is why didn't he ask anything about where his son was found." Rush stood off to one side, looking at the house. She thought she saw the curtains move. "It was almost like he knew we were lying about finding Joey's body."

"How do you want to handle this?" Valens looked at the house.

"We don't have enough to brace him." The detective started toward the car. "We have to know more about the Naifs."

"Maybe Vera found something while looking for the truck." Valens walked around to the other side of the car to drive.

"I'll have to send the kit to Abby." Sear slumped in the back seat.

"We'll get the messenger service and do that next." Rush pulled out her phone. "The faster she can identify the DNA, the better I'll like it."

"Where's Joey?" Valens started the car and pulled away from the curb. "What did he do, and where is he now?"

"Did he do anything at all?" Rush shook her head. "He might be dead too."

"What about Mrs. Naif?" Sear breathed cold air in the back seat. "What actually happened to her?"

"That old man killed all three of them?" Valens pointed the car back toward the office. "Is that what we're saying?"

"Not yet." The blond detective checked the address of an overnight service. "But we're going to have to nail this down before we claim that the father had more motive to kill a girl than his son, the boyfriend."

"How many hospitals do you have here in town?" Sear scratched his face.

"Almost a hundred." Valens looked over the seat at him for a moment. "Mrs. Naif?"

"Maybe we should talk to her doctor." Sear looked out the window. "You're going to need to know if what happened to her was a disease, or poisoning."

"I doubt Naif will give us permission to exhume the remains." Rush dialed the number she found. "He wants us away from the house for some reason."

"We can't prove anything." Valens dreaded the thought of calling every hospital in the city and asking them who had attended Mrs. Naif when she died.

"We'll have to get the DNA we took from the Quail house tested. Then we can think about our next move." Rush knew the evidence had to be hand delivered and watched every step of the way. "Dr. Sear, you're going to have to escort the kit to your friend. It's your case."

"Right." Sear nodded. "I'll let you know the results as soon as I have them. Say a couple of days maybe."

"Is this Abby girl that fast?" Valens spared a glance at him. It took Philly a month to get DNA tested.

"Depends." Sear straightened in his seat.

"On what?" Valens glanced at Rush. She smiled slightly back.

"Her caffeine intake." The doctor brushed off mist on the window.

"We'll keep looking for Joey's truck." Rush smiled. She doubted Sear was joking. He didn't seem to have the capacity. "If it shows up, we'll call Baltimore with the information."

"I'll call as soon as I know something." Sear nodded. "Find out what Mrs. Naif died of from her doctor."

"Another day of calls." Valens snorted. "Yay."

"We'll get it done." Rush smiled. "But why?"

"I don't know." The doctor looked out the window. "We have a disappeared son. His girlfriend was mauled in the woods by large dogs. That makes things point at him as the murderer barring anything else we find out. Now we know his mother had a mysterious disease that the doctor couldn't diagnose and she died. Unlikelier things have happened. I once had to do a post on a girl hit with a toilet seat from an airplane. I just want to rule out things so when everything's done, I can say that this death was clearly a murder and this is the reason why."

"And if know Mrs. Naif was poisoned, it gives us another piece to add to the pile." Rush nodded. "Everything does point at Joey. Maybe that was the point."

"Frame the kid, and then sit back and watch us prove he did his girlfriend?" Valens thought about some of the cases they had worked and some of the things he had done. "All right. It's just as likely as anything else we got at the moment."

"Maybe Vera found him alive somewhere." Rush didn't think that was too likely.

"While I'm thinking about it, if you can find out anything about Mrs. Naif, see if it's enough for an exhumation order." Sear hated having to dig up the dead. He knew they didn't need the body anymore, but he hated doing it.

It felt like a home invasion.

"I'll put it on my list." Valens said this with an eye roll.

"Good." Sear smiled quietly when he saw his old car parked in front of the police station. "I'll call you as soon as I have the results from the tests."

"How?" Valens pulled up beside the alleged automobile.

"I picked up a card from your desk." Sear picked up the kit. He checked the seals before getting out of the unmarked car.

"That guy is really strange." The detectives watched the doctor get in his car and drive away in the afternoon traffic.

"He knows something we don't." Rush shook off her reverie. "I could feel it. Best guess is he knows how Mrs. Naif died, and he doesn't want to tell us how he knows."

"And he doesn't think it was natural causes." Valens bit his lip. "He thinks it was the old man."

"He knows it was the old man." Rush got out of the car. "But he isn't going to tell us how he knows. That's his secret."

"So how do we work it?" Scotty led the way to the station.

"We talk to Vera and see what he found out." Rush picked up the diary. "Then we start calling hospitals until we find out what we can about Mrs. Naif."

"Digging her up?" Valens held the door, and then crossed the lobby toward the elevators.

"If we have to." Rush kept pace. "It might be the key to cracking Mr. Naif, or Joey."

"We still have to find Joey." He pushed the button for their floor. "He's been in the wind for ten years."

"We'll find him." She brushed a strand of hair away from her eye.

"Dead or alive?" Scotty looked around for Vera. He spotted the wide man hunched over a cup of coffee at his desk.

"What did you find, Nick?" Valens walked over to Vera's desk.

"Your guy hasn't paid any taxes in the last ten years, isn't listed as a property owner, or voter, hasn't signed up for a credit card, and hasn't touched his banking account in all that time." Vera handed over a sheaf of notes and faxed papers. "His phone service lapsed because he didn't pay the bill."

"He became a ghost ten years ago." Rush and Valens exchanged glances. "What did he do before that?"

"He was a kennel assistant at Marcovy Veterinarian." Vera pulled another sheet close so he could read it. "Clocked out ten years ago and never went back."

"What did they say about him?" Rush smiled at his expression. Of course he had asked about the boy. He would have been a poor detective not to.

"He was bright and steady. He was putting himself through school. He planned to try for a vet degree, and license." Vera smiled. "He had no reason to vanish."

"What about Arleen?" Valens's question changed his expression from smug to bothered.

"The lady I talked to said Arleen Quail was the nicest girl she knew." Vera leaned back in his chair. "She got their engagement rings."

"Anything on her?" Scotty frowned. How had she got the money for that?

"The same thing as the kid." Nick handed over a separate set of papers. "She walked off her job, said she was going home and would be back the next day, and she never came back."

"At least we have an idea what happened to her." Rush went to her desk. "Let's get started on the phone calls to the hospitals. Maybe we'll get lucky there."

"Hospitals?" Vera stood. "What are we doing?"

"We want to find out what we can about Joey's mom." Valens went to his own desk. "Lilly thinks she was poisoned."

"There might be a chance she was poisoned." Rush locked the diary away as she pulled her phonebook close and started looking for the numbers for the hospital.

"Is that what Doc Strange said?" Vera looked around. "Where is he?"

"He's hand delivering some evidence to a lab." Valens sat at his own desk. He picked up his phone. "Since we're going to be at this all day, let's get some lunch."

"Good idea." Vera smiled.

5

Detective Lilly Rush pushed a strand of blond hair away from her face as she walked down the fifth floor hall of St. Matthews Community Hospital. Scotty Valens walked beside her, watching the doors as they looked for the man they wanted to meet.

They found him talking to a man and woman. The woman held her face. The man had his arm around her shoulders. His eyes was red.

The doctor pointed the couple to a waiting room. He escorted them along before heading back to the room.

"Let's hold on for a second." Rush looked around. "It looks like we've come at a bad time."

The doctor, two orderlies, and a nurse rolled a bed out of the room. They headed to the elevator. The bed went in first, then the orderlies. The nurse handed off a drip stand and bag.

The doctor came back down the hall. He stood in the waiting room door and informed the couple what was going on, and what they could expect. He held up his hand as if to say he would be able to tell them better news later.

"Doctor Brighton?" Rush walked over after he stepped away from the door. "Detectives Rush and Valens. I talked to you on the phone earlier."

"About Louise Naif?" Brighton squirted some hand sanitizer on his hand from a bottle on the nurse's desk. He rubbed the lotion in as he thought. "I never did figure out what was wrong with her. She died before any of the tests pointed to something I could do for her."

Brighton stood by the desk. He had come in from his office to meet the Naif family at the hospital. Louise sat in a wheelchair pushed by her son. Her sallow skin and labored breathing said she was in a lot of pain. Joey had more of her square features than his father's hawkish appearance. A girl with long curly hair hovered around the outside of the group.

"We're going to take you into room 535, Louise." Brighton pointed out the room. "A nurse is going to help you change into a gown, and we're going to start doing tests to find out what's wrong with you."

He took the wheel chair away from Joey and pushed his patient into her temporary home. A nurse came over from the desk to help out.

"Please stay out of our way." Brighton pointed at the waiting room. "We'll tell you what we can when we can."

"But she died while we were working on her." Brighton frowned, eleven years adding a few more lines, gray to his brown hair, and a small scar from a bicycle accident on his cheek. "She had a convulsion and started vomiting blood. Then she went into arrest. We did everything we could, but we couldn't bring her back."

"What do you think the cause was?" Valens had his pad out. Maybe the symptoms would be indicative.

"I don't know." Brighton shook his head. "I wasn't able to stabilize her fast enough to get a work up. She reported acute gastric pain, and blood in her urine. I'm guessing something was making her kidneys fail."

"What happened after she died?" Rush doubted there was an autopsy. If there had been, they wouldn't be there.

"I'm taking her home." Mr. Naif looked around at the room of grim faces. "The undertaker will be here to pick her up. Gray and Fitch."

"He refused to run an autopsy. Had another doctor come in and sign the death certificate when I wouldn't." Brighton frowned at the detectives. "What is this about?"

"We don't know." Rush shrugged at her own statement. "We're investigating the family and we found out Mrs. Naif died. So we wondered if there was anything out of the ordinary about it."

"Everything about it was unusual." Brighton rubbed his hands together again. "I talked to the people from the funeral home. They had been given instructions to cremate the body as soon as they could. The doctor was someone I never heard of before that day. The admin went along because Naif threatened to sue for malpractice."

"Did you do anything wrong?" Valens leaned back, hands together.

"No." Brighton shook his head. The heart monitor zeroed out. Blood covered the sheets and part of the bed. The patient shook with her hands clenched tight. Her sunken eyes turned to the medical staff trying to save her. She closed them and walked away. "There wasn't time for us to do anything wrong. We got her in a gown, hooked up an IV, and took some blood for tests to see if we could find anything. Then she went in convulsions."

"What happened to the samples?" Rush felt a trace of excitement. If the hospital still had them, it might be a link in the chain.

"We usually keep them in storage for seven years and then get rid of them." The doctor looked at a nurse calling his name. "In this case, I asked the lab to hold them when they were done."

"Can we have them?" The detectives looked at each other. This could be a break.

"I don't know how much good they'll do you after all these years." The doctor gestured at the nurse's station. "Have one of them call down for you."

He walked off with the nurse that had called him.

"What do you think, Lil?" Valens wanted to smile.

"I think it will be contested in court." Rush did smile. "But it doesn't matter because Naif lost all claim to it. He probably didn't know they had a sample that could be tested."

"He probably would have gotten it back and destroyed it ASAP." Valens walked over to the desk. "Excuse me, Dr. Brighton said we could have the samples from Louise Naif."

"The lab is down on the ground floor." One of the nurses looked at them over Ben Franklin glasses. She looked like balls crammed into a uniform, with a round head on top. Her hair resembled a wig. "I'll call down and tell them you're coming."

"Thank you." Rush nodded at her.

Valens waited until the call was made before turning away from the desk. They walked down the hall to the elevator.

"Do you think we'll find anything useful after all this time?" He pushed the call button as he poised the question.

"Right now, we don't have anything concrete." Rush crossed her arms. "We know that Arleen and Joey both disappeared after Mrs. Naif died. We know Arleen is dead. That's it."

"Knowing Mrs. Naif was poisoned gets us what?" Valens mimicked her move.

"Depends on what she was poisoned with." Rush smiled at him.

They rode down to the ground floor. Signs on the walls pointed the path through the maze of the hospital layout until they reached a door marked Biological Testing. Valens opened the door and went inside, looking around for anything that might attack.

"Hello?" A short tech in a lab coat and scrubs appeared. "Are you the detectives?"

"I'm Detective Rush, and this is Detective Valens." She showed him her badge. "Dr. Brighton said you had some samples for us."

"This is the receipt." The technician handed over a clipboard. D. Brody was stitched on the front of his shirt. "I need you to sign where I put the X marks."

Rush wrote her name in the three lines amid the legalese. She handed the clipboard back.

"This is the report that went with the samples. According to the paperwork, we used a vial to run tests. We didn't find any common drugs in her system when we tested for them." Brody handed over a blank folder. "We didn't get a call back for more tests because the patient died. A copy of the order to hold the remaining samples and a death certificate is in with the report."

He went to a refrigerator and pulled out a foam box with a handle. He handed that to Valens.

"This container holds three vials of blood and some skin samples." The technician frowned. "I don't know how viable the vials are going to be after all this time. Just make sure to keep them somewhere cool and dark until you need to test again."

"Thank you, Mr. Brody." Rush smiled. "Were you here when the samples were being tested?"

"No." He frowned. "Waldo Cary was here then. When I came on, the order given to hold them was passed down to me by his replacement."

"Thanks again." Rush nodded. "We'll call if we need anything else."

The detectives left the lab with their prize. Valens opened the folder and looked through it. He shook his head.

"Problem?" Rush glanced at him as they crossed the lobby.

"I don't have an idea what this means." He waved the top sheet at her. "What do you think?"

"We need to take this to our own lab and have someone tell us what it means." Rush shrugged. "Best guess, the hospital found something in the sample that wasn't supposed to be there, and that was why Brighton held on to the remainder. He knew something wasn't right with the way the body was yanked out of here while they were still trying to figure out what happened."

"We need to talk to the people at the funeral home." Valens put the folder back together and tucked it in his work pad. He flipped to the note where he wrote the name down. "Fitch and Gray. I wondered why they agreed to pick up the body so fast."

"This other doctor too." The blond detective pushed the door open for them. "Why did he sign the certificate so fast? He must have known something wasn't right."

"Naif bringing in somebody to help him cover up things?" Scotty started along the front of the building to where they had left the car. "Maybe we can flip one of them to tell us what happened."

"If they're still alive." Rush pursed her lips. "He might have killed them to keep anyone from knowing he killed his wife."

"So he killed five people to cover up killing a sixth one first?" Valens frowned. "That's a whole lot of murders at one go."

"We've both seen worse." She shook her head. "The question is what's the motive?"

"We're going to need a warrant to search his finances." He unlocked the car for them.

"We're going to need to talk to Fitch and Gray and the doctor who signed off on the death certificate." Rush got in. "Where do you want to start?"

"Let's start with Fitch and Gray." Valens nodded as he got behind the wheel. "What about the samples?"

"We should drop these off and let our lab take the things apart." She indicated the sample cooler. "Maybe that will give us enough for a warrant on the rest."

"Why kill the girl if he did kill the girl?" Scotty pulled out into traffic. He pointed the car toward the forensics lab building.

"The same thing applies to Joey." Rush looked out the window. She saw flashes of people who weren't there anymore. "Why kill him if he is dead?"

"Have you had a chance to look at Arleen's diary?" Valens glanced at her.

"Not yet." Rush straightened in her seat. "I will as soon as we can get the warrants for Fitch and Gray."

"Do you think they knew Mrs. Naif might have been poisoned?" Valens watched for the street leading up to the lab.

"I don't know." She brushed back her unruly strand of hair. "It seems odd they were johnny on the spot."

"Same with this doctor." Valens pulled up to the gate house in the fence surrounding the Philadelphia Police Forensics Lab. Ballistics, fingerprint analysis, image enhancement and analysis of video and audio, and substance breakdown went on in the white brick building. DNA packets were sent to a separate lab to be typed and then sent back to the technicians.

If they were lucky, they might know something from the blood by the end of the week.

6

The detectives convened in Stillman's office the next day. He had set up a conference call with their counterparts in Baltimore, and Cole Sear at the Naval Yard. He had decided it was time to share information and clear away anything that looked like obstacles to the investigation.

"Everyone ready?" The lieutenant placed his glasses on his desk. "Go ahead, Moreland."

"We got nothing." Moreland sounded unsurprised at the results. "Naif never set up here under his own name. Same for the girl. Evidence shows the girl was killed where she was found by wild animals and then covered up at the scene."

"Dr. Sear." Stillman had expected that conclusion after reading the reports from his own detectives.

"The victim was attacked while alive by at least three animals that have a bite that resemble large dogs. The marks are distinctive and clear in the surviving bones. Exposure and some animal predation doesn't obscure that in the pictures of the body. Exact time of date is out, but facts gathered point that she was killed at least ten years ago. Stomach contents didn't have time to liquify so she was killed right after dinner at a fast food place according the fungus I found in the stomach." Sear sounded apologetic about the lack of helpful information. "My colleague, Abby Sciuto of NCIS, has matched the DNA from the tooth of the victim to samples given to me by Arleen Quail's mother. We're sure that Arleen Quail and the victim are the same person."

"Lilly?" Stillman gestured for his detective to say her piece.

"We talked with Joe Naif's father, Bruce. Didn't get anywhere with him. Said he threw all of Joe's things out when he vanished. We got nothing here for Joe as far as city/county taxes, renewal of his license, or bank accounts. So Joe and Arleen vanish after leaving work, but Arleen is found dead ten years later. We didn't find any motive other than maybe a robbery in Baltimore.

"We did find some things out about the Naifs that we're still trying to put together. Louise Naif had some kind of attack and died in the hospital. Her body was picked up within hours. A non-attending physician signed the death certificate as natural causes. The funeral home that did the pick up burned down two years ago. We're still trying to find the former owners. They moved to Florida."

"What were the symptoms?" Sear broke in before she could detail their search for the missing doctor.

"The day she died, she had vomiting and blood in the urine. Her doctor said it indicated kidney failure." Rush checked her notes. "We're going to do a follow up and see if we can get more from him."

"Sounds like someone put antifreeze in her food." Sear sounded vague again. "Without the body, there's no way to prove it."

Rush looked at Valens. He stepped out of the office, reaching for his phone. That was something they could test for if they were lucky.

"That's cold." Moreland broke in from the speaker. "If the husband did put the stuff in her food, why?"

"We don't know." Lilly turned back to the phone. "All we have is the name of the physician that signed the death certificate. He never had a license to practice here. The name we got was Wilhelm Schumacher."

"Schumacher?" Bunk broke in again. "Are you sure?"

"That's what our copy of the certificate says." Rush looked at Stillman. The boss had the look of concentration where the next second could be the most valuable second ever.

"You know the name, Detective Moreland?" The lieutenant prompted.

"There's a guy here in Baltimore. He's a black doctor." Moreland said something away from the phone.

"So?" Stillman looked at Rush. What did race have to do with it?

"He works off the books." Bunk paused. "He does things for the underground like pulling bullets."

"So there's another Baltimore connection." Stillman nodded. "Do you think he killed the girl?"

"The Shoe Maker?" Bunk seemed to be trying not to laugh. "No. I doubt he killed anyone in his whole life. How does he know this Bruce Naif?"

"That might be the key to this." The lieutenant put on his glasses. "What's your next move?"

"We're putting a BOLO out for Schumacher so we can pick him up and talk to him." The detective said something away from the phone. "Maybe we can get something out of him."

"We'll keep digging into things here." Stillman nodded. "Is there anything else before we break up this meeting?"

"Everyone says Joe Naif had a white pickup." Lilly checked her notes. "We can't find it anywhere. When you pick up Schumacher, see if he has it. That might be enough evidence to get him to say something about what happened."

"Was it registered to him?" Sear cut in.

"Good question." Stillman frowned at the interruption. "Was it?"

Rush checked through her notes. She frowned.

"I don't have a registration for any car under his name." She glanced at her frowning boss. "Whose truck was he driving?"

"Check the father." The lieutenant tapped his desk. "Anything else?"

"Do you want one of your guys present here when we do bring in Schumacher?" Moreland sounded pleased.

"I'll send two of my detectives down to sit in." Stillman nodded. "We might have more dead bodies laying around that we don't know about."

"I have one question that seems odd." Sear said. "What's with the doghouses without dogs at the Naif house?"

"No clue." Stillman frowned at Rush. She shook her head. "Detective Moreland?"

"No idea." Bunk sounded thoughtful. "How many doghouses are we talking about?"

"Eight." Rush watched Sear inspect the things and wondered what was the problem other than the absence of dogs. "Dr. Sear is right. There were bowls but no food, and a small amount of water."

"Eight?" The Baltimore policeman made a whistling sound. "Around here, that's a puppy mill, or a fight ring. No dogs means it shut down for some reason."

"Maybe there's a line to Naif from Schumacher through some kind of gambling." It looked right, but not wholly right. "Maybe that's why Schumacher signed the death certificate."

"We'll pick him up." Moreland hung up.

"Check Naif's tax records, Lilly." Stillman frowned. "See how many cars he has."

"Right, boss." Rush went to the door.

"Tell Vera and Miller to head down to Baltimore." The lieutenant called at her back. "We have to bring Schumacher back as an accessory."

"Right." Rush left the office.

"Dr. Sear?" He picked up the receiver and cut off the speaker.

"Still here, sir." He didn't sound all there.

"How easy will it be to prove that dogs killed the vic?" Stillman knew a body in the wilderness attracted all kinds animals and insects.

"Fairly easy." Sear took on some of his sharpness. "Experts will be called in for the defense to show that other animals had picked at the corpse. There's no helping that. In my opinion, the fatal wound was inflicted to Arleen's neck by something like a mastiff, or maybe a Saint Bernard. It was a dog with that type of bite range. The problem is that without the dog, we can't match him to the wound. And if we can't match a particular dog, the defense will claim any dog in that range could have inflicted the wound."

"Is there anything else I should know?" Stillman knew there was something. Lab rats loved keeping some kind of surprise back.

"I think Arleen Quail was pregnant when she was killed." Sear sounded like it was something he didn't want to admit. "I'm consulting with the coroner here for a second opinion."

"It's another motive." He tapped his desk. "It points to the boyfriend if he was enraged about it."

"I don't think he did it, sir." Cole paused as if in thought. "I think they were moving toward getting their own place, maybe trying to get married. Joey was making enough at the vet's to support them with a little work. I think this has to do with Mrs. Naif's poisoning."

Stillman sat back in his chair. He looked over the reports in his mind, filling them in an outline. The tree pointed them at both of the male Naifs. The problem was they only knew where one was.

As long as they had no idea where Joey was, Bruce could get an acquittal by blaming his son for the murders.

The prosecution had to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt.

And they couldn't get a warrant based on the idea that they thought Bruce Naif had buried his son somewhere on his property. A judge would laugh in their faces.

"Do whatever you can, Doctor." Stillman fiddled with his glasses. "We're going to need it when we go to court."

He put the phone down and sat back in his chair. They couldn't move forward without Schumacher. The man was the only link between Philly and Baltimore.

If Sear hadn't located her identity, Arleen Quail would have been another Jane Doe waiting for who knows how long before something happened to move her case forward. That one lucky break might be enough to lead to her killer.

Is that why she had been killed in Baltimore? Distance from her home might have been the primary reason. He thought there was something else. His mind turned to the dogs. Like Sear, he was bothered by their absence.

It wouldn't be the first time a weapon was discarded after being used. Three animals in the city could be dropped anywhere without a problem.

Everything was circumstantial without those dogs. The DA might be able to convict if they had some evidence Joe had met a bad end. Otherwise, a trial would go down in flames with what they had right now.

Stillman pulled the next open cast from the stack on one side of his desk. It was a shooting that Vera was investigating. They had a gun, and a suspect. Ballistics were out on whether the gun matched up to the bullet. He read through the reports. They would have enough for a warrant as soon as they had something concrete from the lab.

He could spare Vera and Miller long enough for them to sit in on Baltimore's interrogation. Their suspect wasn't going anywhere as long as he didn't know they were looking for him.

Two of his detectives had moved their cases to court. He took those files out of the pile and put them in his desk until he could move the files to records.

He went through three of his files. They were stalled. He didn't have the one piece of information he needed for his squad to clear them. No witnesses, hardly any evidence, nothing.

There was nothing he could there until they stumbled on someone who could tell them something.

Maybe he should have Sear check the bodies for something they could use.

Sear was quick with the suggestion for antifreeze. How many murders had he seen done with automotive fluids?

"Boss?" Rush stood in the door of his office.

"What did you find, Lilly?" Stillman took off his glasses and placed his pen on the report he was reading.

"Bruce Naif owns a white pickup. It's the only vehicle he has registered." Rush checked her printout. "We saw a blue pickup in his driveway."

"So he disguised his truck with a paint job." Stillman thought for a moment, his eyes on the report. "Why would he do that? Go out there and get the VIN number. Make sure it's the same truck."

"All right." Rush started to leave.

"Rush." Stillman looked up. "Did Scotty call the lab about those tests?"

"Yes. They running another screen for that type of stuff." Rush nodded. "Maybe we should hire Sear from Baltimore to work for us."

"Yeah. He's shown that he's an excellent detective. Better than the ones I have." Stillman tried not to smile. "If Naif sees you around his truck, tell him we're still trying to trace down his son's property."

"On it." Rush turned and headed for her desk. She pulled her pistol from her desk and waved at Valens to follow her from the office.

The thought of a disguise and the words on the report on his desk mixed together for a moment. When they separated again, he had a hunch about the open case.

He went to his door and looked over the bullpen. Warshawski was at his desk, talking on the phone and writing down something. He seemed to be studying the words as he went. He hung up after a few minutes.

"Warshawski." The detective raised his square head, made even squarer by his brush cut hair. He picked up his notebook and walked over to the lieutenant's workspace.

"I have been reading your file on the hit and run on Griffith, Dan." Stillman indicated the file on his desk. "You said a picture of the car was taken."

"Yes, sir." Warshawski checked his notes. "It was a green impala with black stripes. One witness said it had green wheels. The plate numbers didn't match any impalas in the system."

"So we concluded the plates were stolen." It was a common enough practice. A hitter stole the car, or plates, did the hit, abandoned the car. "The vic was a Two Dyer?"

"Right." Warshawski checked his notes again. "Ronald Raymond, Wrong Way Raymond. I thought that it was a simple hit and run, but the lab people say that the car sped up to nail him on the sidewalk."

"I want you to take the list of associates and go through looking for anyone with green wheels on their car." Stillman smiled at the look on his face. "When you're done with that, go through his list of enemies if you got one of those."

"Right." Dan Warshawski looked down at his notebook. He was in for a lot of riding around Philly the next few days.

7

Bunk Moreland and Jimmy McNulty received their warrant after an hour of haggling with a prosecutor and a judge. That would be enough to hold the Shoe Maker until they figured out how to crack him wide open.

They borrowed a fugitive team and started checking the known haunts of the doctor. Word would get back to the man sooner or later. They wanted to pick him up before that happened.

They found someone who let them know Schumacher had a place in a house in the middle of the city. He used it for an operating theater.

The address was too vague. They resorted to showing their quarry's picture around until someone pointed his house out. The old lady admitted she wondered about the amount of visitors to the house.

The fugitive squad had four men in it. They donned their bulletproof vests, pulled weapons from racks in their cars and loaded them, and surveyed the terrain.

"Three of us will take the front, three on the back. We knock on the door and see if he's home. If he is, we enter. If he isn't, we set up and wait for a while to try to catch him coming home." Moreland and Crespi, the leader of the fugitive squad, examined a map of the area on the back of an unmarked car. "The only places we can watch the house from are this car lot down the street, and the parking lot of that stop and go."

"Do you think he'll be there?" Lake, a woman built like a fire hydrant with short hair under a cap, chewed gum as she watched the street.

"There's no telling." Moreland chewed on his cigar. "He might be in there carving someone up right now."

"Let's get this over with so I can get a drink." McNulty gave a nod with the statement.

"Take the front, McNulty." Bunk shook his head. "I'll take the back. I'm not trying to run after no one."

"You need to lay off the bacon." McNulty pointed at his partner's gut.

"You need to lay off the lip." Moreland glared back.

"Casey and I will be at the front with McNulty." Crespi folded up the map. "Lake and Simon will take the back with Moreland. Casey gets the ram. We knock on the door. If he opens, we take him in. If he doesn't we knock in the front door and grab him."

"Let's go." Bunk had his shotgun in hand. "I hope we don't have to shoot this guy."

The five policemen and one policewoman walked down the block. Bunk's group went down the side of the house while the other three stepped on the porch. Crespi counted to thirty before he nodded for McNulty to knock on the door.

"Baltimore Police Department!" McNulty's fist slammed the door three times. "Fugitive warrant!"

They made sure not to stand around the door. Many a felon had tried to escape by shooting through the front door while running to the back.

"Wilhelm Schumacher!" McNulty slammed the door again. "We got a warrant. Come out."

"Hold on!" Schumacher called from inside the house. "I'm in the middle of something."

"Open this door, or we'll bust it in!" McNulty looked at Crespi. The fugitive expert had his rifle pointed at the door. The look on his face mirrored the detective's own. Something was up.

"Knock it down, Casey." Crespi waved at the door. "This guy is stalling for some reason."

Casey grabbed the round ram by the handles welded to the top of the shaft. He swung it back, then swung it forward as hard as he could. The weight of the thing helped build speed on the return swing. He knocked half the door out of the way as the wood broke.

Crespi knocked the rest out of the way as he charged into the house. He scanned for targets as moved away from the opened portal.

McNulty followed, tracking the room with his pistol. Everything looked clear to him. Where had Schumacher gone?

Casey placed the ram down on the porch floor. He pulled his own rifle forward on its sling. He stood ready to shoot at anything approaching the door.

"Show your face, Willie." Crespi swept the space in front of him. "You're only wanted for questioning."

McNulty concentrated on the room. Three chairs and a television were in the room. A bookself full of books and another one full of DVDs sat next to each other. One door led to a closet full of boxes. Another led to the rest of the house.

A shadow ran toward the back of the house. The detectives followed at a slower pace. They were supposed to bring Schumacher in alive. Shooting him would dead end their murder case.

McNulty checked the room the shadow had fled from. A man lay on the bed. Blood covered the sheets. He was still breathing barely. He tried to point a pistol at the detective.

"You want to live?" The policeman just pointed his weapon at the man. "Seriously. I don't even have to shoot you. You're going to bleed out."

The Shoe Maker's customer dropped his pistol. It clattered against the floor.

"Good call." He kicked the gun away while reaching for his radio. "Dispatch, I need a bus to 5566 Larchmont. Unknown injuries."

"Copy Seven Mary Twelve." The dispatcher seemed less than pleased with his radio protocol. "Ambulance is on the way."

"Hang on." McNulty doubted the stranger had any time for an ambulance. "We'll get you to a hospital and you can explain how you got hurt to the docs."

"Got shot, dummy." The man huffed with every word. "Hurts like crazy."

"Shouldn't caught the bullet." McNulty handcuffed the man to the bed. "Don't go anywhere. You might get shot again."

Casey shook his head. He had watched the confrontation in the bedroom. If McNulty had gotten shot, he would have shot the guy and put more of his blood everywhere.

"Doing stuff like that can get you killed." He looked down on the detective from his greater height.

"I doubt it." McNulty moved into the kitchen, Casey at his back. Crespi stood where he could look out the rear windows. He winced suddenly.

"Looks like your suspect is down." He went to the back door. "Let's see if he can walk."

Moreland and Simon had an older man in handcuffs. He was bent over. Lake dusted off her cap and put it on.

"The next time I tell you to stop, you better stop." She brushed dirt off her vest. "Idiot."

"We got a guy down in the bedroom." McNulty shook his head. "I've got an ambulance on the way."

"I was trying to save his life when you broke in the door." Schumacher groaned from the pain rolling out from his pelvis.

"Now we're going to give someone with a license a shot, Willie." Moreland shook his head. "Give me any trouble and Officer Lake will give you another demonstration of her footwork."

"It will be my pleasure." Lake glared at the doctor.

"What's next?" Crespi had other bad guys to track down and lock up.

"If you can take him in and book him, we'll have to get and execute a warrant for the house. The wounded guy has to be taken to the hospital and locked down." Moreland shouldered his shotgun. "We're going to have extradition orders filled out for the Shoe Maker so we can send him to Philly when their detectives get here."

"What's the charge?" Crespi asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Practicing without a license." Bunk liked to keep things simple. "Maybe accessory to murder unless we get some kind of understanding."

"I didn't help kill anyone." Schumacher shook his head. "I'm a doctor."

"You can tell us all about it when we get back to the station." McNulty smiled. "You can even tell us about all the other operations you've conducted. It would be fascinating."

"Fascinating?" Moreland looked at his partner. "Where did you pick that up?"

"I've been reading." The other detective smiled. "I do that when I can't drink enough."

"You sit on the house." Moreland unwrapped another cigar. "I'll work on the warrant and get it approved."

"Let me go talk to the guy we got shot." McNulty shook his head. "Maybe he can tell me who shot him before he croaks."

Sirens cut the air. Uniforms would be on the scene soon enough. They'll be there to help with the search as soon as a warrant could be procured.

Moreland pulled out a Miranda card and read Schumacher his rights as they escorted the criminal to a car to take him back to the station. He put the card away as soon as he was sure the doctor understood his rights.

McNulty went to the front door. He waved the EMTs into the house to the bedroom. The guy was still alive, if breathing hard. The ambulance guys pulled on gloves as they thought about what they needed to do.

"We're going to need you to take off the handcuffs." The driver rolled a gurney in place. "We're going to have to transfer him to the gurney and roll him out to the truck."

"Can you keep him alive?" McNulty undid the handcuffs.

"I don't know." They transferred the wounded man to the rolling bed with a practiced yank. "There's a lot of blood on these sheets."

"I'll need that for evidence." He wished he had his flask. "We have to prove that the guy we busted was operating without a license."

"I'll put it in a bag for you." One of the techs said this as they pulled the gurney out of the bedroom.

"Thanks." McNulty doubted that. He had the guy's gun on the floor, and bullets in a cup on an end table. They would have to do.

"McNulty?" A uniform appeared in the door.

"Ross?" The detective smiled. "I need you to go to the hospital, and sit on that guy. Make sure to collect the sheets from the ambulance guys. Call me if he dies."

"Right." The uniform turned to leave. "Is he getting charged?"

"I don't know yet." The detective looked around the room. "Depends on his story."

Ross vanished in the direction of the front door. Maybe he would be able to pry something loose before the docs shooed him out of the room.

More uniforms arrived. They set up tape to keep people out of the area where they were working. It wouldn't keep out a thief who wanted to get in. Something had to be done about the door being down.

Maybe they could put up some plywood to keep the casual thieves from taking everything left behind by the forensics guys.

It took a couple of hours for the warrant. The forensics guys had already arrived and stood waiting on the porch, kits at their feet. McNulty really wanted a drink by the time Moreland returned with the paperwork.

"Tear this place apart." Moreland smiled. "We need anything that looks like a medical supply."

8

Wilhelm Schumacher sat at a table in a small room. It was a familiar scene. Not many things changed between police stations no matter where in the world you were.

The four police looking at him, despite being individuals, even had the same way about them as other police he had dealt with over the years.

"How do you want to do this, Willy?" Bunk Moreland settled his ample bulk in a officer's chair across from the Shoe Maker. "You're done practicing. The District wants to move ahead with a Without License charge."

"Will the boy live?" Schumacher should have his lawyer in the room. How many years could he get for practicing without a license?

"Yeah." James McNulty nodded from where he stood by the door. "They had to put blood back into him, but he'll live."

"That's good." Schumacher nodded. "Can I have my lawyer now?"

"He'll have to meet you in Philly." The big stranger held out some papers in a wide hand. "Wilhelm Schumacher, you're under arrest for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory before and after the fact. The jail time is going to be longer than what you were going to get here."

"Wait." Schumacher looked up. "What?"

"This is your handwriting and signature?" The woman handed him a copy of a form. He liked looking at her more than the goon squad.

"So?" He looked around. What was the trick here?

"The woman was murdered, Willy." Moreland leaned back in his chair. It creaked under the sudden change of position. "Poisoned. It looks like you knew and helped cover things up."

"I've never killed anyone." Schumacher examined the handwriting on the form. It looked like his. His signature sprawled across the line for it. He looked at the date again. "Ten years ago?"

"In Philly." The big man looked down at him. "How many people have you helped poison?"

"None." Schumacher spread his hands. "This is a misunderstanding."

"Explain it to us." The woman took the copied form back and put it in a file.

"I was doing a favor for a friend." He stood at the edge of the crowd. He had been hired to sew up anyone bitten if the dogs got out of control. One of the owners approached, hands in the pockets of his jacket.

"You're the doctor, right?" The owner resembled a bird of prey with his long nose and sharp eyes.

"Yes." Schumacher examined the stranger. "You seem healthy enough. I can't prescribe any medicine for you."

"It's not for me." He shook his head. The crowd milled around them as they talked. Money changed hands as bets were made. "My wife is sick and I need someone to help her if her doctor can't. I know they'll want to cut into her and I can't stomach that. I need someone to sign the death certificate for me so I can get her out of there if she dies."

"Why come to me?" The renegade physician didn't exactly trust this story, but he didn't see anything quite wrong with it either.

"Because I need a doctor who can disappear after everything is said and done." He looked around. "I want to be able to bury my wife without a year of waiting for them to discover what illness she has."

"My fee for something like this is five hundred up front, another five when the job is done." Schumacher hoped that was enough to scare him off. There was something not quite right about this.

"I'll pay you a thousand, with another five hundred on top." The owner handed over an envelope. "As soon as she dies, I'll have one of the brothers pick you up so you can help me."

"All right." Schumacher nodded. The other man walked away.

"The brothers?" Moreland leaned forward. "What brothers?"

"The Capels." Schumacher shrugged. "They picked me up, drove me to the hospital, collected the body, and then Matty drove me back to Baltimore."

"What happened to the body?" The big stranger leaned closer. "What did they do with it?"

"I don't know." The doctor shrugged again. "Dez took it to the husband, I assume."

"Do you remember what this husband looks like?" The woman bit her lip.

"Yes." Schumacher felt ten years would not be enough for the other man to change beyond recognition.

She pulled out a line up card for him to look at and laid it on the table. Six strangers with roughly the same face and hair were placed together in a group. He had to show them which one was the man who had hired him.

He placed his finger on one of the pictures. That man had the same hawkish look and intent that he had seen ten years ago.

"Can you do this in a court?" The big detective almost smiled.

"Of course." Schumacher nodded. "Everything I have said is true."

"You're still in big trouble, Willy." McNulty looked down at the nails on one hand. "The Capels won't take this sitting down. Matty is running with Loco Dave, and Dez is in the joint for hooking up a set of hot cars. Once they find out you sold them out, there's going to be trouble."

"I can explain things to them." Matty and Loco Dave was not a good combination in his book. There were reasons Loco Dave was called Loco.

"You said you were a staff doctor in case someone was bitten." The woman put the line up back in the file. "Bitten by what?"

"Dogs." Their faces were blinding lights to the doctor. "The man you are interested in used to fight dogs there. Sometimes the dogs would get loose and grab someone. I was there to help patch things up."

"How long did this go on?" Moreland knew there were dog fighting rings in the city. He helped animal control grab some of those lowlifes over the years as a beat cop and a detective.

"That ring was busted about two years after the woman's death." Schumacher watched the police drag people into a waiting bus. He turned and walked away before they scooped him up with the rest. "I think animal control put the dogs down as too vicious."

"Why don't you do that now?" Moreland watched as several expressions battled on the doctor's face. Finally it settled on regret.

"It was a necessary source of cash." Schumacher didn't look at them. "Once I had enough, I didn't need to work there anymore."

The detectives looked at him. Here was the first lie he had told them. He still needed cash. Dogfighting was just as good a source as fixing thugs.

And they expected it was less dangerous if he didn't gamble.

"We're going to take you with us while the prosecutors work some deal out." The big detective nodded. "Detectives Moreland and McNulty are going to have to verify your story with the Capels."

"Good luck with that." The doctor smiled. The Capels had worked hard on their reputations. They wouldn't talk about any job they had worked on even if it was ten years gone. And a murder beef was nothing to them.

"Let's go, Doc." The big detective undid the cuffs so Schumacher could stand. "I'm Detective Vera, and this my partner, Detective Miller." He put the cuffs back on. "We'll sign your paperwork on the way out."

"What do we have here?" Moreland stood.

"We either have a cooperative witness which will still have to stand trial for practicing medicine without a license, or a multiple murderer trying to shift the blame." Vera frowned. "I'm hoping for a cooperative witness."

"Sit him down in the squad room for a sec." Moreland gestured at a desk. He waited for Vera to return. "What kind of case do we have before we get into a shootout with the local rednecks?"

"I don't know." Vera shrugged at their looks. "The doc I. our main suspect and gave us a reason for the connection. It might be why the girl was killed here. The thing is we don't have anything to tie him to the girl without the dogs. He can claim he didn't know his wife was being poisoned, and grief made him forge the death certificate. We need something concrete like a smoking gun."

"The Capels aren't going to give us that." McNulty shook his head. "They're like mad dogs themselves."

"As soon as we get Schumacher back to Philly, I can come back and help out." Vera smiled. "I'm good with crazies."

"We're trying not to declare war here." Bunk shook his head.

"We can talk to Dez." McNulty rubbed a cheek. "He's locked up and not going anywhere. Maybe that will stir things up with his brother."

"We still have too many holes." Moreland played with a cigar as he thought. "If we knew what the girl knew, maybe that would give us a motive. Then we could start building a case."

"We know the wife was poisoned. The stuff was in her samples. Maybe the girl knew about that." Vera liked that. It kept things simple. "If she did, all we have to do is prove it somehow."

"Give me the Capels." McNulty and Moreland shook their heads in almost perfect unity. "There's no way to prove what she knew now."

"We don't have to if we can make it look like that was what she knew for the court." The big detective nodded. "The defense will be in the same boat. They'll have to prove she didn't know and that the old man didn't sic his dogs on her."

"And they'll have to prove the kid is still alive." Moreland nodded. "It's a workable thing, but the husband can still claim the kid killed his girlfriend and fled before anyone found her. The motive is the same, except now it's against Joey."

"That's why we have to keep working it." Vera put his hands in his pockets. "If we can rule out the boy, everything falls into place."

"He didn't set up here." Moreland gestured to include the city. "If he didn't set up in Philly, where did he go?"

"Maybe he is in Philly." Vera gave a shrug. "He's just not alive."

"Makes sense." Bunk frowned. "How do we prove it?"

"We can't unless we find his body." Vera shrugged again. "Any ideas?"

"If it was me, I would have buried him somewhere I knew no one would go." McNulty crossed his arms. "That way he wouldn't be where it would come back to me, and I knew exactly where the body was at all times."

"Like where they used to do the dog fights." Vera saw thoughts turning into exploding lights in the detectives' eyes. "What are you two thinking?"

"It's a good thought, but the ring that we know about closed two years after all this went down." Moreland slumped. "Why wait that long to hide the body there?"

"We don't have anything else to do." McNulty cut him off. "We'll get one of those ground scanners and see what we can find. Let's get a cadaver dog too. The captain will have a stroke."

Moreland smiled.

"Let's do it." He put the cigar in his mouth. "We'll have lunch while we're looking."

"Maybe even a beer, or three." McNulty smiled. "Let's get that address and get to work."

After a brief conversation with Schumacher, the detectives split up. Vera and Miller escorted their prisoner to the car and put him in the back for the long drive back to Philly. Moreland and McNulty headed for the local university's geology department to ask for help. Along the way, they called the K-9 people for a cadaver dog.

Schumacher watched the roads as they drove north out of Baltimore. He wondered if he should have made sure his lawyer sat in on the conversation.

Being a witness was better than being the defendant. He should have known the deal was crooked all along. It made him a conspirator without his knowing.

He wondered if the Capels would think the same. He had dealt with them rarely. He doubted they would talk to the police to clear themselves over this charge.

On the other hand, he didn't think they hurt women. So maybe the police could sell them on that.

"If the department had the money, we could have flown and been back in an hour." Vera grumped as he drove along.

"But then we would be missing out on driving in all this traffic." Miller told him with a smile.

9

Rush sat at her desk. Arleen's diary was in her hands. She concentrated on the last entry, trying to puzzle out what it meant.

Arleen didn't know about the dog fighting, or the poisoning, according to her diary. She wrote about Joey wanting to tell her something important. She assumed it was moving in together, or getting married.

That was what she had been hoping for when she went to meet Joey that afternoon.

Instead she had been driven cross country and wound up dead.

What had Joey wanted to tell Arleen? She had ideas, but no evidence to point to which one was right. If Joey had found out about the poisoning, he might have confronted his father. That might have led to Naif killing his son, and future daughter-in-law.

It made sense. How could they prove it without a body?

"Anything good?" Valens had reports from the lab and NCIS on his desk. He seemed to be pulling himself out a fugue.

"Arleen thought Joe was about to pop the question." Rush put the book back in its evidence bag. "She didn't seem to know about Joe's mother."

"So he killed her for nothing." Valens shook his head. It wouldn't be the first time they had a job where the victim had been killed for the wrong reason.

"Or he killed her for something we don't know about since most of the main players are dead." Rush picked up a pen and dug out her notebook. "We must have missed something in his financials, or his background check."

"Vera and Kat are bringing in Schumacher." Scotty closed his eyes. "He identified Naif as the guy who hired him to pick up Louise's body from the hospital."

"Did he know Joey?" Rush wondered if the younger Naif knew about the dogfighting. It seemed against the grain with his job.

"I don't know." Scotty wrote down a reminder to ask. "Maybe there's another motive there."

"There are too many motives." Lilly tapped her desk with her pen as she went through her notebook. "We'll never be able to close this if we don't know what really happened."

"We can't bring him in for questioning unless we have something better than Schumacher's identification." Valens looked at the windows. "We just have enough to charge him with tampering with procedures."

"Maybe suspicion of murder, but then we run into all this conflicting evidence." She started reading her notes. "We would never have enough for a conviction."

"We need something that will change everything." Scotty went back to his reports. He started reading. "We need a clear indicator instead of guesswork."

Rush went through her notebook again. She frowned at the things she had written down. She paused over the word MONEY with its question mark beside it. What did Bruce Naif do for a living?

Where did he get his money?

Rush put her notebook down, and sorted through the reports on her desk. She looked at the bank records they had subpoenaed from Naif's bank. Money was the best motive.

"Naif worked for Caesar Construction before he retired. Regular checks in and out." She ran her finger down the numerous entries on the pages. "He got a payout of 25,000 when his wife died. It looks like he's barely touched it."

"What's he been living on?" Valens looked up. "His social security?"

"He was gambling and dogfighting around that time." Rush ran her finger down the rest of the entries. "Maybe he put aside enough for a nest egg."

"Doesn't sound like any gambler I know." Scotty frowned. "Most go through their money like it's water."

"That's what I was thinking." Rush frowned. "He doesn't have any other big deposits for the rest of the time."

"Maybe we missed something." Valens sat back. "Maybe he has another bank we don't know about."

"All right." Rush nodded. "So he's living a simple life and keeping his head down. He's putting in small checks to explain how he's paying his bills, but he might have money coming in that he's trying to keep hidden. What is he doing to get it?"

"Something illegal." Valens smiled. "Something we can bust him for if we can find out what it is."

"Maybe we should set up on him so we can figure out what he's doing." Rush looked at the insurance papers. "That's odd."

"What?" Valens crossed around to her side of the joined desks. He looked at the papers over her shoulder. "I don't see it."

"Joey was covered by insurance." Rush showed him the numbers. "If he died, they were supposed to pay another 25,000 dollars to his father."

"Did they pay out?" Valens looked at the bank reports. "I don't see a deposit for it."

Rush checked the number and for the insurance company and called it. That was something they should know.

It might be a motive they could use to clear the case.

And if Naif had declared his son to be dead, why hadn't he mentioned it when they talked?

Rush went through the phone tree until she got a human operator. She explained who she was, why she was calling, and asked who she should talk to about any claims. The operator put her on hold while she checked the records.

"The claim adjuster for that was Posey Devlin." The operator finally said after a minute of elevator music. "I'm going to transfer you to her office."

A click, and the phone rang somewhere else.

"This is Devlin." The voice seemed young to Rush. "Do you have a claims number?"

"I'm Detective Lilly Rush, Philadelphia Police Department." Rush hoped they were on the right track with this. "I am checking to see if your company made a payment on a life insurance for Joseph Naif."

"Do you have a claims number?" She sounded annoyed to not deal with a real client.

"No." Rush looked at the papers. "I have the policy number."

"Give it to me." Devlin typed in the number. "The policy did pay out to a claimant. A Bruce Naif filed a claim last year. He filed a declaration of death through the courts."

"So he got 25,000 dollars." Rush looked at the policy, glancing at the small scale at the bottom of the paper.

"It was a hundred." Devlin typed some more. "The policy was upgraded five years ago."

"Thank you." Rush hung up. Now they almost had a motive.

"Naif declared Joey to be dead so he could get the insurance money." Rush smiled. "Only he didn't submit the money to his bank. Why?"

"Banking out of town?" Valens looked at the policy again. "How much did he get?"

"A hundred thousand." Rush looked at her computer. "Do you think he used a bank in Baltimore for the insurance money?"

"Maybe." Valens went to his own desk. "Why the commute?"

"I don't follow." Rush started typing in a search for banks in Baltimore.

"It's almost like he was living two lives." Valens nodded as the idea took hold. "He works here for Caesar, dogfights in Baltimore. Why drive down there when there are plenty of gambling rings here? He kills his wife here with poison, but then kills the girl with dogs in Baltimore. What are we missing?"

"He upgraded Joey's policy and then waited another few years to declare his son dead." Rush printed out the list of bank addresses. "Then he cashes in on the policy."

"What did he do with the money?" The house had looked okay from the outside.

"Maybe he's hoarding it." Rush ripped the list in half and handed one half to Valens. "Let's see if you're right about the two lives."

They worked down the list until Valens found a manager who remembered Naif. He confirmed that his customer banked there fairly often. A subpoena would have to be gotten for the records.

Valens made a note of the bank before he checked the rest on his list. Maybe he would get lucky and find another one.

At the end of their search, they only had that one confirmed bank. How were they going to get a prosecutor to help with a warrant out of state?

"Looks like we're going to have to get another warrant." Rush smiled. "If we can't get him, maybe the IRS can."

"I'm good with that." Valens smiled. "If we can't put him jail, they can figure his income and take everything he owns."

Rush picked up her phone again and called the prosecutors' office. She explained what she had found out and asked for a subpoena for the bank records.

It wasn't much progress, but it was something.

The problem was they would have to serve the paper in person. That meant another long drive down to Baltimore to get the records.

It couldn't be helped. At least when they had the records in hand, they would have a better idea about the man they were chasing.

"Two lives with a long commute between them." Rush stood. "The only reason is to keep things separate in case of trouble. If he hadn't used his own name, we wouldn't have been able to track down the second bank."

"He might have more identities out there, Lil." Valens pushed away from his desk. "We just have the banks for his real name."

"We're going to have to start trailing him." Rush pulled out her gun from its drawer and clipped it to her belt. "We don't know if he has the resources to flee if we put pressure on him."

"He has that 25 k." Valens pointed out. "If he has a chunk of that other payout, he can get on a plane and just leave."

"Let's talk to the boss about getting those records." Rush shook her head. "If we had tumbled to this sooner, we could have had Vera and Kat pick them up when they picked up Schumacher."

"This keeps up, we'll have to get the feds involved at some point." Valens shook his head as they walked over to Stillman's office. "All this crossing of state lines is making things complicated."

"Maybe that's why he did it."

10

Bunk Moreland and Jimmy McNulty had stopped to get a lunch and ate before heading to Johns Hopkins. They had called ahead and made an appointment. They found a building marked for physical sciences after some searching. They checked the directory and headed for the office of the professor they wanted to meet.

Moreland knocked on the door. He wasn't quite sure if they should barge in, or if there was some other thing they should do.

"Come in." The voice belonged to a woman.

The detectives entered the small office. They were struck by the small pieces of rock everywhere. Some had rainbow stripes. Others were black chips. One looked like a piece of gold.

"Detective Moreland?" The woman stood from behind the desk that stood in front of the room's only window. "I'm Dale Carver. How can I help you?"

"We were told you know everything about ground soundings." Moreland put his hands in his pockets to keep from touching things. "We need to dig up a floor, and we would like to use the equipment to check for likely spots."

"What are you looking for?" Carver was taller than both men, had skin like rawhide, and brown eyes that matched some of the stones in the office.

"We're hoping to find a body." McNulty inspected everything nonchalantly. "It's a long shot."

"I can get the machinery and some students to help out." Carver nodded. "It'll take a couple minutes. Is there any power nearby?"

"It used to be an old stock house." Moreland shook his head. "I doubt there will be any electricity."

"We'll have to load up a generator then." Carver made a list on a piece of paper from a pad. "I'll start getting things ready to go to the site. The address?"

Moreland gave her the address. She wrote it down on the piece of paper.

"I'll bring the gear around as soon as I can round up someone to help me carry it." She put the paper in her pants pocket.

Moreland and McNulty looked at each other. They were used to obstruction and delays. This woman just took their request and was running with it. They couldn't hide their surprise.

"It'll give the kids some experience. They need it." Carver pulled on a light jacket over her striped shirt. "Don't worry. I'll get it there."

The detectives left the office with thanks. They headed back to the car.

"There's a woman after my own heart." McNulty smiled.

"Tell me about it." Moreland got behind the wheel. "Let's head over to the dogfighting ring."

They rolled across the city to the outskirts, heading into the suburbs and farmland beyond Baltimore. The address was a small farm with a corral and fence line for horses and cattle. The gravel drive headed down to an old house and farm.

"Who owns this place now?" McNulty looked at the grass growing too tall and the trees bending under too long branches.

"The county does." Moreland got out of the car, looking around. "The last owners lost it because of the taxes on it."

"The dogfighting ring?" McNulty went right for the barn.

"They were the owners before that." Bunk lit up a cigar. They had asked for a cadaver dog, but he didn't see the search truck.

McNulty vanished inside the barn. The door swung slowly as he passed.

Moreland followed slowly. It was entirely too quiet for him.

Bunk wondered how the animal cops had stumbled on this. He knew dogfighting was a big gambling thing. The place was out of the way with no one able to see what was going on from the road.

If he checked into it, he was sure the cops had been tipped off by someone.

The question was why.

Who would torpedo such a good moneymaking thing for everyone else?

Schumacher sprung to mind. The question of timing would make the prosecutor think about things before trying to apply pressure.

The only other people he knew associated with the ring were the Capels and Naif. The brothers would cut their own mother into chunks before tipping off the cops.

If Naif did it, why?

It lent credence to the theory he had buried something on the farm between the arrests and the sell to the next owners.

Could they prove he did it? He doubted it. They would need a confession when this was all over.

Finding the boy's body would bolster their case against the father.

He couldn't have been killing his girlfriend if he was in the ground.

Moreland stood in the door as McNulty inspected the inside of the converted barn. He seemed to be imagining where he would put a body.

The search and rescue man from the county arrived while they were walking around the inside of the barn, inspecting the spider webs. The baying of a hound brought them to the door. The handler, Jean Weston, got out of the Tahoe. She crunched on the ground in her boots as she waved to the detectives.

"Jeanie!" McNulty smiled. "How you been?"

"Suck it, McNulty." Weston gave him the finger. "You ran out on me and I had to walk home after our date."

"That was three years ago." The detective held up his hands. "Don't tell me you're still holding a grudge."

"What do you think?" Weston glared at him.

"We need you to shelve that for the moment, Weston." Moreland wondered how much it would take for the officer to shoot his partner. Probably not much after a moment of consideration. "We need to know if your dog can point a dead body for us."

"Bluie can sniff out a dead body good enough." Weston opened the door for her dog to jump down to the ground with ears and jowls flying.

"Go ahead and start sniffing around." Bunk waved at the stock house. "We'll mark every hit with an evidence tag."

He got numbered stands out of the trunk of the car. They would show the doc where they needed to run the ground scanner.

Moreland handed half of the stands to McNulty while he was trying to ask what he had done. The dog growled at the detective in a way that mirrored its owner.

Professor Carver arrived while they were halfway through their survey. She had two students with her. They pulled out a block of tech on wheels and hooked it to a portable generator in the back of the truck they had rented for the job. One of the students, a man with a beard named Bob, pulled the ripcord on the generator to get it started.

Carver and the other student, introduced as Annette, checked the machinery to see if it was giving a clean picture to a laptop.

"Looks like we're ready to get started." Carver nodded to her students and Moreland standing in the door.

"Bring it in, Doc." The detective waved at them. He held the door so they could roll the scanner into the building.

Numbered stands marked several places on the floor. Bluie sat in one place, looking up at his trainer. She waved for McNulty to put another stand down.

"This is a lot of places to check out." Carver looked at the stands.

"We don't really expect to find bodies under every marker." Bunk gestured at the stands. "This is just where the dog says something died."

Bluie led the way to the back wall, sitting twice more at that end of the wide empty space. His jowls shivered as he looked up at Weston. She gave him a dog biscuit.

"Let's see what happens when I run the scanner over the ground." Carver positioned the machine where it could get a picture of what was in the packed ground. "It looks like we have some kind of remains."

"Are you sure?" McNulty left his rancorous reunion and joined Moreland and Carver at the computer screen. "What is that?"

"Looks like a human hand to me." Carver shifted the scanner over a foot. A rib cage stood out on the black and white screen.

"This is bad." McNulty pulled out his phone. "We're going to need the Coroner up here."

"Weston." Moreland looked at the stands on the floor. "Can you walk Bluie around the rest of the farm."

Weston nodded. She made a face at McNulty as she passed. What did I do, he mouthed back as he waited for the medical examiner people to pick up the phone.

"Do the rest of the floor, Doc." Moreland followed Weston outside. "See if you can find anything else."

Moreland and Weston toured the farm. Bluie didn't sit anywhere else. He had a few moments of indecisiveness but disregarded any scent that didn't belong to anything dead.

They arrived back at the yard as the medical examiners and forensics people arrived. It would be up to them to dig the bodies up and figure out what happened.

"Thanks, Jeanie." Bunk stood to one side. Things were out of his hands until the techs knew something. "Good dog, Bluie."

The hound raised one paw to be shaken. The detective did so with some amusement.

"Better get a better partner, Bunk." Weston led her dog to the search/rescue truck. "McNulty will get you fired."

Moreland waved as she got behind the wheel and pulled out of the circle of vehicles. He made a note to get her report later for court.

McNulty and the crew from the university stood off to one side and watched things. He explained the various operations as the forensics people worked.

Cole Sear and one of his assistants pulled out a bag from the stock house. They wore overalls with hoods and face masks. Cole shook his head as they loaded the bag into a transport van.

Moreland approached, careful not to get close to the bodies. Sear paused when he saw the detective.

"What do you think?" Bunk asked.

"You found at least two human skeletons and five dog skeletons so far." Sear frowned. "We'll have to do some DNA typing to confirm the human identities."

"What killed them?" That was the better question.

"Don't know yet." The doctor huffed out a breath of cold air. "We'll have to check the bones and any surviving tissue."

"If this is the Naifs?" Moreland could feel a road trip coming on. "We'll have to see what we can do about bringing in the father. At least this answers the questions about the dogs."

Sear nodded. It looked like the owner buried them with the humans.

"Let's get this done." Moreland shook his head. "I'll have to call Philly to let them know."

11

The detectives and Stillman decided on a plan. The first thing they needed were the bank records and the Capels. Then they needed a DNA match on the bodies and any evidence Sear and his people could come up with before they braced Naif.

That led to Bunk Moreland picking up Dez Capel and his lawyer at the jail. They were put in a van with Matty Capel to be transported north to their counterparts' station. Matty glared at Jimmy McNulty who grinned back. The bruise on Matty's forehead didn't help his appearance.

"What happened there?" Moreland asked as they got in their unmarked to follow the van north.

"He stepped in front of the butt of my shotgun." McNulty smiled. "He should have been looking for it in my opinion."

"You think he's going to cooperate after that?" Moreland shook his head. "Good job, McNulty."

"What did I do?" McNulty grinned. "At least I didn't have to shoot him. That's a plus in my book."

"You are a gaping hole." Moreland followed the van on the street.

"I am what I am." McNulty settled in for the long ride ahead.

Cole Sear gathered all of his reports. He had sent the DNA collected to Abby at the Naval Yard. Once she had the results, identification of the bodies would be confirmed. There weren't any physical signs on the bodies, so he concluded they had been poisoned. Luckily embalming had not been used to cover up the poison still left in their systems.

The ten dogs had various injuries, but had also been poisoned. He packed the casts of their teeth in with the rest of the evidence he was taking to Philly. He would have to bring it back, but Philly wanted first shot with the death of the mother.

He packed his old car, gassed up, and headed north again. Abby would call him as soon as she knew anything.

He just had to make sure not to answer any calls from her boss.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs tended to be very protective of his people, and had his own rules he followed.

Detectives Lilly Rush and Scotty Valens looked at the Naif house from their car. They had been following Naif around, but he hadn't done anything but eat lunch at a local place and come straight back home.

They had warrants issued for Naif's arrest. They planned to do that when the people from Baltimore arrived.

She doubted Naif would be happy to see his conspirators waiting at the station when they brought him in.

Lilly wondered what the big secret was that Arleen mentioned in her diary. What had she been told? What was she expecting? Was it enough to kill her?

Why do it in Baltimore? Why the constant traveling back and forth? Had he stopped his dog fighting?

Where was the crack they needed to break the case open?

Her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and answered with a yes. She listened to her caller as she watched the Naif house. She nodded before hanging up.

"The Baltimore people are at the House." Rush got out of the car. "We're up."

Valens got out and followed her up to the front door of the house. He knocked on the door with his fist. He didn't want to kick the door down.

"What do you two want?" Naif glared at them as soon as he opened his door. "Get off my land."

"We have a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Naif." Rush didn't bother showing him the paper. "We would like for you to come along with us."

"Really?" Naif glared at her. "What have I done?"

"We think you killed your wife." Valens pulled out handcuffs. "Turn around and put your hands on top of your head."

"No." Naif tried to close the door in their faces.

Valens threw his body against the door and crashed inside. He hit the old man and they both went down. A punch to the face rocked his head back as Naif struggled to get away.

The detective and murderer struggled until Scotty slammed Naif's head against the floor. That stunned the man long enough for the policeman to roll him over and start putting on the manacles.

"This didn't have to be so hard." Valens got to his feet. "Enjoy that lump on your head."

Rush and Valens yanked him to his feet. She looked around at the front room of the house. Furniture and televison were in place, but no pictures. He had erased his family from the walls.

"Didn't like your family much, did you?" Rush let Valens hold the old man by the arm while she looked around the front room. She frowned at the blank spots on the walls. "Why take the pictures down?"

"None of your business." Naif struggled in Valens's grip. The detective held him in place.

"I think it will matter to a jury." Rush shook her head. "I also think that maybe a divorce would have been simpler."

"Shows how much you know." Naif shook his head. "You're making a big mistake."

"Is it as big as yours?" Valens pulled him out of the house.

"What do you mean?" Naif glared at him.

"You should have buried the girl a little better." Valens pulled him along. "Then we would have never got on to you at all."

Rush took one more look around. She hated the emptiness of the room. She walked over to the front door and pulled it shut behind them. They would have to come back and search for anything that might bolster their case. It wasn't as open and shut as she wanted it.

Naif could still claim his son killed his wife and the girlfriend. They needed some way to counter that before they went to court.

Valens shouldn't have said anything about Arleen. That would make it easier for him to shore up some kind of defense against their evidence.

"Watch your head." Valens put Naif in the back seat of the unmarked. He pulled out his miranda card and read the man his rights, and told him why he was being arrested.

"I want my lawyer." Naif glared at them through the window.

"Does he have a name?" Rush went around to the passenger side of the car. "We'll need a phone number too."

"I'll call him myself." Naif glared at them through the grill between the front and back seats.

"That'll be awhile then." Rush told him as she settled in her seat.

Valens got behind the wheel. He pulled away from the house. He noted Mrs. Quail on her lawn as they passed. She stared at them as the car rolled by.

They cut through Philly to their office. They processed Naif through booking and made sure to take his shoe strings and belt away, as well as any personal items such as his wallet, a ring on a chin, and money. Everything went into a bag and was sealed for his release whenever that was.

Rush hoped it wouldn't be for a long time.

They walked him up to the office and put him in one of the interrogation rooms. He complained bitterly about his one phone call and his lawyer. The Capels and Schumacher were in rooms next to his. They were waiting their turns.

"Detectives Moreland and McNulty." A wide black man in a nice suit introduced himself and a white man who looked like he had just come off a bender. "How do you want to play this?"

"He's screaming for his lawyer." Rush grimaced. "We'll have to give him his call. Otherwise everything he says will be inadmissable."

"We got the Capels and Schumacher here." Moreland pointed at the doors. "Schumacher already identified the man for us."

"What about the Capels?" Valens raised an eyebrow.

"Clammed up." McNulty shook his head. "They don't want to be seen as rats."

"You tell them this is about a murder?" Rush asked.

"Rather be known as the murderer of old ladies than a rat." McNulty shrugged.

"Idiots." Moreland shook his head. "They're both idiots."

Dr. Sear had commandeered Valens's desk again. He had his papers spread across the top of it. He looked at the casts and the pictures. Stillman looked over his shoulder.

"What's he doing here?" Valens glared across the room. "And why does he always take my desk?"

"Sear brought all the reports he's filed for this case." Moreland couldn't hide his amusement. "He said he sent off DNA to be typed. He's just waiting on the callback."

"That still leaves us with how do we crack this guy." Rush looked at the interrogation room. "He won't confess."

"Sear wants to talk to this guy first." Bunk shrugged. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"I think it's a great idea." Rush smiled. "I think Dr. Sear might be able to annoy this guy enough for him to slip up."

"She's got a point." Valens glared at his desk. "He annoys me enough."

"So we let him loose on this Naif and watch what happens?" McNulty smiled. "It might work."

"We can try and get the Capels to identify the guy." Moreland shrugged. "It might be worth a try."

"All right." Rush nodded. "Let's see if we can do this before Naif's lawyer gets here."

The detectives gathered around Valens's desk. Sear looked up. He hunched down in his coat. He was attracting too much attention over this.

"You think you can crack this guy?" Valens asked him.

"I don't know." Sear stacked the reports together. "We don't really have anything to lose. He's not going to cooperate in any case."

His phone started playing Walking on Sunshine. He pushed the talk button. "Hello, Abby. Oh. Hello Agent Gibbs. How are you today?"

"I understand completely, sir. We needed a rush job on some DNA and Abby is the fastest person I know." His face pulled down. "It won't happen again. Did the DNA match?"

His face brightened at the news.

"Thank you." He hung up the phone.

"What's up?" McNulty grinned. "Woman troubles?"

"Abby's boss said to start using channels from now on." Sear stood. He picked up the reports. "He's a bit protective of his personnel."

"Let's get started." Rush led the way to the interrogation room. She opened the door and held it for the medical examiner to carry his reports and casts into the room. Naif glared at them as he paced on the other side of the room. "Would you mind sitting down, Mr. Naif?"

"I want my lawyer." Naif glared at them.

"He's on the way." Rush gestured at the empty chair. "Please sit."

Naif settled in the chair. He glared poison at the both of them. Rush shut the door.

"You can't question me without my lawyer." He pulled on the cuffs holding his hands behind his back.

"We already know everything." Shear looked down at his reports. "Would you like some water?"

"I don't want no water." Naif glared at him. "You don't know jack."

"I know you're going to be dead in a few months." Sear turned his sad eyes on the other man. "That was easy enough to learn."

"How did you know that?" The prisoner paused to consider. "My doctor told me that was privileged."

"I have eyes." Cole picked up the first file. "Since you're going to die, we just need you to confirm some details for us before you go."

"Why would I do that?" The disbelief dripped through the words.

"Because at this point the case is closed." The doctor gave him his vague look. "We have enough to convict you. We don't need you to talk at this point. We just want you to so we can fill in the blanks."

"No." Naif shook his head. "I'll tell you nothing."

"Then let me tell you." Sear pulled out the picture of Louise Naif. "This is your wife. She was poisoned. You hired Wilhelm Schumacher and the Capels to help make off with the body from the hospital with a phoney funeral home scam. The problem is Schumacher had to use his real name and credentials to fill out the death certificate. So it was easy to track him down in Baltimore and arrest him. He pointed you out in a line up.

"This is your son, Joe." Sear held up the next photo. Naif looked away. "You hit him on the head with a blunt object. That's what produced this crack. I'm going to say this was unpremeditated. I think you picked up the closest thing at hand and smashed him in the face. Then you buried him somewhere else than where we found him. Same with your wife."

"You killed the dogs later." Sear pointed at the pictures of the dog skeletons they had uncovered. "I know this because these dogs killed Arleen Quail. Bite marks are conclusive on that."

"That doesn't mean anything." Naif smiled. "You don't have anything real."

"It doesn't have to be real." Sear looked sadder than ever. "That's the point of circumstantial evidence. The defense had to produce a reasonable doubt, while the prosecutor has to show there is no doubt. And there isn't in this case. Do you know why?"

"No. Spell it out for me, smart boy." The prisoner smiled, showing crooked teeth.

"All right." The medical examiner held up two pictures of Arleen Quail. One was the dead body found in the park. The other was with her fiancé, Joe. He held them side by side. "What do you think?"

"I don't see any difference." Naif smiled.

"Detective Rush?" Sear held up the photos so she could look at them. She shook her head. Sear stood up and went to the one way window. He held up the pictures so the detectives on the outside could see them. "Guys?"

"Quit wasting my time." Naif stood up. "Where's your evidence, boy?"

"Look at the pictures again, Mr. Naif." Sear turned from the window. He held up the photos side by side. "Don't you see your mistake?"

"I didn't make any mistake." Naif faltered. He sat down.

"Really?" Sear sat down too. He placed the pictures in front of Rush. He took a bag from his pocket. They were marked as Naif's personal belongings. "I talked to Mrs. Quail again. Do you know how she knew Arleen and Joey were dating?"

"No." Mr. Naif seemed confused by the tangent.

"Joey gave Arleen a ring." Rush smiled. "She mentioned it in her diary."

"Exactly." Sear tapped the pictures. "Now do you see the difference?"

"She's not wearing the ring around her neck in the crime scene photo like she is in the other picture where she's alive." Rush smiled. "That was her promise ring. Joe had given it to her until he could buy matching rings."

"Do you see your mistake now, Mr. Naif." Sear opened the evidence bag with a pocket knife. He dumped the contents on the table. In the middle of the belongings was a ring on a chain. He picked it up. "To my darling, Arleen. Love you always, Joe."

Naif walked down the path. He shooed the dogs away. They didn't like that, but he pointed and they left the carcass. He bent down and took the ring and its chain. They went in his pocket before he covered the body. He couldn't leave something like that behind to identify the body.

He whistled for the dogs and walked back to where he had left the truck. It was too bad he would have to get rid of them. They were the only loyal companions he had.

He drove away to get to the dog fights. He needed to make some money.

"I should have thrown that away." Naif looked at the table, but not at the pictures.

"I guess you'll get to think about that when you're under the prison doctor's care." Rush put the personal belongings back in the bag. She put the ring and chain in a separate evidence bag. "What was the point?"

"My wife didn't want me to gamble." Naif closed his eyes. "I needed it then."

"Why move the bodies?" Sear gathered up the pictures and reports. "Why move them to the dog fighting ring?"

"The place where I had hid them was being renovated. I couldn't let the crew find the bodies. So I got them out of there as fast as I could." Naif didn't have to do anything to get in the house. He went to where he had left Louise. He dug her out with a hammer. He carried the body outside to his truck. He went back in and pried up some boards and pulled Joe out of his grave. He dropped the corpse beside the other and drove off.

"I think you will have to write this out for us." Rush went to the door. "Then we'll talk to the DA about what he wants to do with you. Then you're going to have to go back to Baltimore and face their system."

Rush and Sear stepped outside. She closed the door.

Epilogue

Bruce Naif sat on a hospital bed. Manacles chained his arm to a rail on the side of the bed. The state had provided him clothes and the services of a doctor.

That doctor, tall and thin, held a stack of reports in his hand. He put on reading glasses to read the results of the tests. He shook his head as he told his patient that he was going to die before his court date came around.

The Capels and Wilhelm Schumacher stood in court in front of a judge. Their lawyers stood with them. The assistant district attorney assigned to their case stood on his side of the aisle. They had worked out deals where they could plead to lesser charges to avoid the murder charges that might have been applied.

The judge handed down their sentences without fanfare. This was just a formal proceeding to him. He had fifty more cases that he had to rule on listed on his docket.

The Capels were separated. Dez still had his own prison sentence to go back to in Maryland. This one would take affect as soon as the other ran out. Matty would stay in Pennsylvania and start his immediately.

The Shoe Maker joined Dez to be taken back to Baltimore. He still had to stand trial for practicing without a license there. He hoped for a light sentence but he doubted it.

Scotty Valens. Nick Vera, Bunk Moreland, Jimmy McNulty stood at a table in the evidence vault for the Philly police department. Rows of boxes filled the shelves. Most said closed, but there was still a portion that remained opened. Occasionally a detective would pull a box and leaf through it in hopes of finding some clue they missed.

That day they were deciding on what evidence stayed, and what had to be transferred to Baltimore for their murder case. As they talked, Lieutenant Stillman arrived with two strangers. One was a pale girl with dark hair with a collar around her neck, t-shirt, and leather pants, and an older man with silver hair and a severe expression. They had a cooler with the samples provided by Cole Sear and a long report for any court who needed it.

Her appearance, and bubbly personality, threw the detectives off, but they had to agree she knew her stuff. No wonder Sear had enlisted her aid. There was also no wonder why Sear was scared of her boss. His hawkish personality filled the room.

Scotty had two boxes. He wrote Louise Naif on one, Joseph Naif on the other. Moreland had his own. It had a label that said Arleen Quail with the time of death as close as they could figure. They sorted out what went with each case.

The boxes for the Naifs went on the shelves. McNulty picked up the box of Arleen's evidence. They left the vault with a few signatures on paperwork to keep the chain of custody intact.

Detective Dan Warshawski paused in front of the sixteenth address on his list. He had searched all over town, eliminating suspects slowly but surely. It was tedious work, but he didn't mind.

He liked to have everything buttoned down before he went to court.

Warshawski got out of his car and walked across the street. He looked at the car parked in the driveway of the house. He took out his notebook and wrote down the license plate before he walked around the car.

Green rims glistened in the sun as he inspected the car. The front bumper, headlights, and front window had been removed. The paint job was a light blue with black stripes. Under the right lights, it could look green.

Dan frowned. Did he have enough for probable cause? He couldn't keep the owner from driving away and getting rid of the car. He couldn't walk up to the house and ask the man if he had run down a rival on the street.

He started taking pictures of the car. At least he would have a record of the damage in case something happened. Then he decided to have a forensics tech come out and check for blood on the front of the car.

If they found blood, he could have the car impounded. If the blood was human, and matched the victim, that would be even better.

The technician arrived and set up a curtain in front of the car. He sprayed the front of the car with luminol. The car lit up in the shadow.

Warshawski called for a tow truck, and started for the door. He had questions he needed to have answered while he waited for the wrecker.

Lilly Rush stood in a graveyard. It wasn't the first time. She had attended many funerals, exhumations, and visits to victims she had helped catch their murderers.

Mrs. Quail stood by the grave. The workers had just filled in the hole. They would plant grass to help cover the wound in the cemetery later. Her husband's stone was next to the fresh grave.

Rush held an envelope under her arm. She had carried it through the service and felt that she had to hand it over to the woman. Reading it had provided something of an insight on how Arleen felt before she died.

Rush suspected that Joey was going to ask her to marry him. That was the big thing on the last page. The ring supported that. Bruce Naif would not state how he had gotten her to go to Baltimore with him so he could murder her.

She expected he told her some story about how Joey needed help doing something and he was going down to help out. All he would have had to do was ask her to ridealong. Arleen would have jumped at the call.

When she had seen something was wrong, it was too late. Naif had sicced his dogs on her.

The fact that Naif would never serve any real time galled her, but at least he would be dead and exposed for what he was. And the cancer he had would make sure that his last days were painful enough.

The detective handed over the envelope. She stepped back as Mrs. Quail broke out in fresh tears. It only lasted for a moment. The older woman wiped the snot from her nose and put the returned evidence in her purse.

Mrs. Quail and Rush walked to the unmarked car the detective had signed out. The policewoman glanced around. She felt eyes on her.

Cole Sear stood across the graveyard. His old car was parked behind him. A girl with long curly hair stood beside him. He hunched in his coat as he stood among the tombstones. The medical examiner crossed in front of the young woman as he walked to his car. When he passed, the girl was gone.

Rush helped Mrs. Quail in the police car. She looked over. Sear's car was pulling out from where he had parked it. She got behind the wheel of her car and pulled out on the narrow road provided by the cemetery. She drove around to the exit, but Sear had already vanished in the street traffic.

She still felt like he had known things that no one else had known. They were things that only one of the victims could have known. It was like he had waited while the police had dug up everything they could that he didn't know. Then he had pounced on the one thing they had missed.

Her questions had been deflected. He didn't want to reveal how he had known.

Unanswered questions bothered her, but there was nothing she could do about it. The case was closed. She probably wouldn't see Sear again.

She drove across town, listening to Mrs. Quail talk about old memories. That was all she had left of her family. At least now she could move forward. She had waited a long time for Arleen to come back. Now she knew that would never happen. She could pull up the anchor holding her down and try to heal.

Rush knew that sometimes that never happened. Some wounds, even when you knew what had caused them, never healed. They were deep holes sucking in everything around them. When all you had was hope, and the hope was taken, what did you have left to keep you going?

She hoped Mrs. Quail would pick herself up and move on instead of crashing.

Cole Sear drove through the city, watching the buildings as he passed. He had grown up in the city, went to school, moved to Baltimore. He paused at the townhouse where his mentor had once lived. Before he had met Malcolm Crowe, he thought he was going to lose his mind.

The doctor had changed all that.

He had grabbed his gift and turned everything around after his talks with Crowe. His life had steadily improved, but there were things only he could deal with and fix.

He waved at the woman with gray hair on the steps of the townhouse. She waved back though he could tell she wasn't sure who he was. He turned the corner. He had a couple of other places he had to visit before he headed home.

He drove until he found his old apartment building. He parked and waited. The windows frosted over. His mother got in the car, thin and frail. They talked for hours before she smiled and got out of the car. She waved at him as the windows cleared.

Cole waved back before he started the car and pulled out into traffic. Talking with his mother put things into perspective. He turned and headed south.

Baltimore had so many dead people. He did his best but not everyone was going to get what they wanted. He had tons of unsolved murders waiting, but he was helpless without some means to connect them to their murderers.

He had a gift, but it only worked under certain conditions. Sometimes those conditions just weren't met. When it did work, things moved exceptionally fast. It was like having an eyewitness that saw what no one else did.

Getting the job as a medical examiner allowed him to smooth over some of those problems that reoccurred throughout the city. He supposed he should transfer and work in a city with a higher death rate, but he liked Baltimore.

He didn't want to burn out and retreat from his job. There were people who needed him to do things the best he could.

He had learned that part well from Dr. Crowe before they had their last session. It was up to him to help those that came forward. Helping them helped him in the long run.

And the police in Baltimore had a lot more challenges to solving things than he did. There just wasn't enough money for them to do their jobs.

He wondered when he was going to crack trying to fix things. He hoped he just killed himself when he did.

He put those thoughts aside as he drove south. He had too many cases waiting on him to deal with back home. He couldn't end it all until he had answers for everyone waiting on him to do something for them and help close their files.

He was their only hope. No one else knew the things he had learned from the victims. He had to make sure that they had a chance at some final rest.

The sun crawled down toward the horizon as he drove through the twilight toward home and more people who needed him to solve their problems.

The End


End file.
